Private Pleasures by Cammie Toloui
5 September 2024 – 11 October 2024
Curated by Salomé Burstein
assisted by Alexis De Bonis
San Francisco, early 1990s. Cammie Toloui is a young photojournalism student. Her practice requires costly equipment, which her part time day-job doesn’t pay well enough to cover. The $22/hr offered by the Lusty Lady Theater – a local strip-club run by women in the North Beach district – convinces her to audition. She switches her name to Tasha and trades her bleached hair for a dark and wavy wig. An official “Lusty”, she starts secretly photographing the space. “I smuggled my camera into work and got the courage to ask my first customer if I could take his picture, offering him a free dildo show in exchange” writes Toloui in $5 for 3 minutes, a book she later published and dedicated to this series. Taking the price equation as its title, the latter bears witness to the equivocal status of the club – a space of entertainment for some, a workplace for others. It takes us from the bar to the backstage, all the way into the undressing room and the Private Pleasures booth, where one-on-ones are performed behind a pane of glass. In its reflection, we meet The Dildo Man, The Cop, The Slug, The Roly-Poly – all characters of a black and white portrait gallery, baroque-like in its dramatic lighting, revealing a broad spectrum of sexuality, fetishes, and often-private aspects of masculinity. Illicit in nature, hidden from the boss's eye, these images both sabotage and replicate the transactional dynamics of the club. They’re the result of a bargain, but also that of a collaboration. Toloui strips, the clients pose – these moments strangely echoing one another, enabling a reciprocity in how the gaze is distributed. "I felt affinity with these customers who the other dancers thought strange", writes again the photographer.
Guided by Toloui’s words, Private Pleasures presents this exercise in subversion and scopophilia for the very first time in Athens. This exhibition was first held at Shmorévaz, Paris (November 2023), before touring at Systema, Marseille (August 2024). For this iteration, Toloui’s photographic series is presented alongside Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000), a film by former “Lusty” Julia Wallace Query and Vicky Funari documenting the 1996 strike and unionizing movement formed by the exotic dancers of the Lusty Lady. A landmark in the fight for sex worker’s rights in the US, the club was bought by the workers in 2003, who turned it into a feminist, cooperative strip-club, running until 2013.
No contract, no pussy!
At the opening the artist will give a talk and will present her book 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes published by Void in Athens.
The book will be for sale by the publisher and Hyper Hypo.
Private Pleasures by Cammie Toloui
5 September 2024 – 11 October 2024
Curated by Salomé Burstein
assisted by Alexis De Bonis
San Francisco, early 1990s. Cammie Toloui is a young photojournalism student. Her practice requires costly equipment, which her part time day-job doesn’t pay well enough to cover. The $22/hr offered by the Lusty Lady Theater – a local strip-club run by women in the North Beach district – convinces her to audition. She switches her name to Tasha and trades her bleached hair for a dark and wavy wig. An official “Lusty”, she starts secretly photographing the space. “I smuggled my camera into work and got the courage to ask my first customer if I could take his picture, offering him a free dildo show in exchange” writes Toloui in $5 for 3 minutes, a book she later published and dedicated to this series. Taking the price equation as its title, the latter bears witness to the equivocal status of the club – a space of entertainment for some, a workplace for others. It takes us from the bar to the backstage, all the way into the undressing room and the Private Pleasures booth, where one-on-ones are performed behind a pane of glass. In its reflection, we meet The Dildo Man, The Cop, The Slug, The Roly-Poly – all characters of a black and white portrait gallery, baroque-like in its dramatic lighting, revealing a broad spectrum of sexuality, fetishes, and often-private aspects of masculinity. Illicit in nature, hidden from the boss's eye, these images both sabotage and replicate the transactional dynamics of the club. They’re the result of a bargain, but also that of a collaboration. Toloui strips, the clients pose – these moments strangely echoing one another, enabling a reciprocity in how the gaze is distributed. "I felt affinity with these customers who the other dancers thought strange", writes again the photographer.
Guided by Toloui’s words, Private Pleasures presents this exercise in subversion and scopophilia for the very first time in Athens. This exhibition was first held at Shmorévaz, Paris (November 2023), before touring at Systema, Marseille (August 2024). For this iteration, Toloui’s photographic series is presented alongside Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000), a film by former “Lusty” Julia Wallace Query and Vicky Funari documenting the 1996 strike and unionizing movement formed by the exotic dancers of the Lusty Lady. A landmark in the fight for sex worker’s rights in the US, the club was bought by the workers in 2003, who turned it into a feminist, cooperative strip-club, running until 2013.
No contract, no pussy!
At the opening the artist will give a talk and will present her book 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes published by Void in Athens.
The book will be for sale by the publisher and Hyper Hypo.
About the artists:
Leah Clements’ (b. 1989, based in London) practice spans film, photography, performance, writing, installation, and other media. Her work is concerned with the relationship between the psychological, emotional, and physical, often through personal accounts of unusual or hard-to-articulate experiences. Her practice also focuses on sickness/cripness/disability in art, in critical and practical ways. Clements is currently artist in residence at Serpentine Galleries and has previously been artist in residence at Wysing Arts Centre and Rupert. She has presented her work at Chisenhale Gallery, Somerset House Studios, Science Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art, Jupiter Woods and Wellcome Collection, London; Baltic39, Newcastle; Vermilion Sands, Copenhagen; The National Gallery of Art, Vilnius; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; La Casa Encendida, Madrid. www.leahclements.com
Ιris Touliatou (b. 1981, based in Athens) engages in a conceptual practice, which transposes the political, environmental and affective, and employs various mediums necessary for each intervention. Manifesting in sculpture, photography, sound, scent and text, her work creates open forms and shared experiences, to comment on time, intimacy, transience, mortality, economies and states of being. Ιris Touliatou has exhibited work at 2021 New Museum Triennial, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; The 7th Athens Biennale, DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art and Radio Athènes, Athens, among others. www.iristouliatou.com
Christian Friedrich (b. 1977, based in Amsterdam and Berlin) investigates the condition, structure and manipulation of subject-object relationships through a variety of media, including video, sculpture, audio and scent. His work frequently employs elements of the sexually outré, played against formalism, aestheticism, and structural contradiction. Friedrich’s work has been shown, among others, at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, PS120, Berlin; Cabinet Gallery, London; NYU, New York; Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz; De Hallen, Haarlem; Goethe-Institut, De Appel, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Städtische Galerie am ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2017, Friedrich was the recipient of the Cobra Art Prize, in 2013 he was nominated for the Prix de Rome.
Aaron Ratajczyk’s (b. 1989, based in London and Berlin) practice explores modes of intimacy and dis-identification, treating the body as a malleable interface. Often expressed through non-verbal affects – mood, atmosphere and poetics – his work takes the form of video, performance, text and installation. His work has been presented at Museum of Modern Art and KEM, Warsaw; Tree Art Museum, Beijing; RCA CCA in partnership with Nottingham Contemporary; Yvonne Lambert, Berlin; Forum for Live Art Amsterdam. Forthcoming projects include group exhibitions at Goldsmiths CCA and South London Gallery (as part of New Contemporaries) and a solo commission by Institute of Contemporary Art, London. www.aaronratajczyk.com
Leah Clements has made a short film of her work Reprise/Reprieve, for anyone who is unable to attend the exhibition The way in for disability, economic, or other access reasons. Below are versions of the film including one with audio descriptions and one with captions. A note: there aren't exactly flashing images but there is a flickering in some of the shots. Proceed with caution if needed.