Sophia Giovannitti – Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex

We desire art and sex because we desire human authenticity, pure emotion, and beauty. And yet, in a capitalist society, both turn into commodities and capital. Through personal experience, Sophia Giovannitti guides us through the realities of art and sex work to reveal their proximity and mutual conditioning. With precision and care, she exposes the material conditions of sex and art and asks: can we use this irrefutable reality to our advantage and for our liberation? How can we take everything without having to give of ourselves?

With its compelling combination of personal stories, critical (auto)theory, and excursions into the history of art and sex work, Working Girl can be considered a groundbreaking work of contemporary feminist art theory. Sophia Giovannitti shows us how to capture independence for ourselves without being indebted to anyone. In the author’s words: „I don’t want anyone to take anything from me. I want to give or sell freely.“

Sophia Giovannitti (*1992, New York) is an artist, writer, and sex worker living in New York City. Her work thematizes and analyzes the permeable boundaries between art and sex work. Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex is her first book.