Validation

^{An Exhibit In WTC Repositions Kink
As A Publicly Acceptable Lifestyle}

“‘It’s my purpose,’ he says. He speaks about ushering in a brave new era, in which the groin is not segregated by shame from the rest of the body. Desires will be explored, rather than suppressed; sexuality and emotion will be shared with an open hand, not like money but like a song, which grows richer and stronger as more voices join in. And why not? Twenty years ago, who could have imagined something like gay marriage, or gender-inclusive bathrooms, or a phenomenon like Fifty Shades? So who’s to say that kink as a lifestyle can’t be next?” (Excerpt from “Surviving Master Joshua: The BDSM Memoir Of An Unfaithful Wife”, by Karma Said)

Kink, legitimized. In 2018, when Joshua first described that vision to me, it seemed eons away. And yet there we were, just a few years later, our portraits gliding across the walls of a prestigious digital art gallery in the World Trade Center. Men in diapers, women in chains, perverts tying and fisting and beating each other up to get off… Us, in our most heightened and vulnerable moments. Us, exposed, grotesque and beautiful, our dirtiest secrets displayed for the world to see. And the world was not rejecting us. 

On Saturday, July 21st, 2024, the digital art gallery Canvas 3.0  presented an installation featuring both live and documented BDSM scenes by the Kink Collective, a Harlem-based group focused on kink education. Located in the WTC Oculus building, Canvas 3.0 is a leader in digital art; Blakelee Pieroni, the artist-in-residence who initiated the project, is co-founder of the celebrated feminist art collective Meta Betties. The featured photographs and videos were by Joshua Rodriguez, Cat Orme, the Kink Collective's co-founders, and group member Evie Amore. The live performances included a bondage scene, in which Master Joshua tied his slave, Natalie; A sensory-play scene, in which Natalie gagged her Master with his own socks; a reading from “Surviving Master Joshua: The BDSM Memoir Of An Unfaithful Wife” by the author Karma Said (me), and an art performance by Blakelee and Cat, in which Blakelee recited verses from both the bible and Roe v. Wade, while Cat mummified her with Ceranwarp.

Blakelee’s Meta Betties is a “multidisciplinary collective that uses art, fashion, events + the blockchain as a catalyst for social change” (metabetties.com). “I'm the artist in residency this year at this gallery, with a digital collection that focuses on women's rights and women's oppression, as well as hypersexualized images of women in our media and in our society, which I challenge through digital crypto art,” she explained. Crypto art is “a blanket term coined to represent the fusion of art and blockchain technology” (cointelegraph.com), which Blakelee employs for digital activism in support of the Women's Protection Act, among other causes. She sees the Kink Collective as a kindred spirit, devoted to reshaping public opinion by “living in our own truths.” “We have 100,000 people walking past this gallery every single day,” she noted. Being that kink is an aspect of their identity people are usually compelled to hide, “I think the location gives the perfect irony.”

Images depicting BDSM scenes rarely show people smiling, noted Cat. “But look at the images here, and you’ll see people who are happy, who are living a life that they want to live, engaged in playing that feels good to them, that connects them with other folks. More than anything, I hope that's what people see and take away: that in its core, BDSM is a way of connecting one person to another in a meaningful and intimate way.” Showing these very private moments in this very public location, added Cat,  “would help bring kink out of dark dungeons” and into normalized alternative lifestyles. “Are kink and BDSM for everyone? No. But can they be understood and accepted by everyone? Absolutely.”

The photographs on display - hundreds of BDSM scenes, switching between the gallery’s 18 large digital screens — told the story of a sexual minority striving for sexual citizenship. A term coined by sociologist David Evans in the 90’s, “sexual citizenship”  refers to a group's right to bridge the private and public spheres. “While sexual activities themselves are consummated in private”, Evans wrote,  “finding sexual partners is necessarily a public act. It requires free sexual expression, and the ability to publicly state one’s desires and seek those who share them. No matter how private, sexual activity requires some level of public acceptance.”  (Sexual Citizenship: The Material Construction of Sexualities, 1993). 

But the images also told his story, Joshua’s. A man who — often due to his own intractability and propensity to fight — saw door after door slam in his face, both from within and without the kink world. He was always rebelling against someone bigger, my Master. But the same intractability and propensity to fight are what propelled him to tenderly gather all us wayward explorers, the people in his photographs, and guide us from our lonely exile to this moment of validation, both his and ours.

It was also my story. I’ve been writing about my Master from behind the scenes for years,  documenting his world, his ideas, his people. But his photographs on the wall were of me. Me, my friends, my people, and my world, which has become one and the same as his own. In this room, I was no longer an outsider; this exhibit was the moment my journey with him came full circle. So when I took a deep breath and came to the stage, I knew exactly where I should start reading. “‘It’s my purpose,’ he says.”