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Working Girl:On Selling Art and Selling Sex
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An exploration into the very similar work of selling art and selling sex, from a luminous new voice
Sex and art, we're told, are sacred, two spheres that ought to be kept separate from the ravages of the marketplace. Yet both prop up two incredibly lucrative industries, built on the commodification of creativity and desire, authenticity and intimacy. Our reaction to this should not be moral or political outrage, nor legal regulation or denial, but rather-as Sophia Giovannitti argues here-acceptance, through which we can find a more autonomous way to live.
In this searching and provocative work, drawing on cultural and political theory, the contemporary art world, and the author's own experience as a sex worker and artist trying to make a living, Giovannitti argues that if we delve into our anxieties around art and sex, we can instead find new ways to live and spaces, however small, of freedom. When there is nothing left to protect, she argues, everything is possible.
Reviews
Highly original and unnervingly smart, Working Girl strips bare the worlds of art work and sex work, revealing unlikely parallels. In Giovannitti's informed and elegant analysis, sex and art come soaked in capitalist relations, their potential for holiness no barrier to the all-encompassing reach of commodification. Working Girl is fascinating in its specificity - the product of Giovannitti's lived experience in a particular niche of both industries - and through this comes a treatise that is both hopeful and new.
I love this book. It's fresh, exacting, and spaciously precisely unfettered. A book with a clear purpose fulfilled. Read it.
An art object that also verbs in the most pleasurable way possible. Filled with clarity and a generous spirit, Sophia Giovannitti's Working Girl is a singular sensation you immediately feel the power of while reading. And later, as you begin to release all your outdated beliefs, you then realize Working Girl completely turned out in the best way possible: you too can be the art object that verbs
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Between the sex worker and art worker is a tension that defines the contemporary commodification of bodies, genders, time and desires. Working Girl documents Giovannitti's critical and creative interventions into this fraught and fascinating zone. She invites us to be more than voyeurs, and to think with her what is at stake in the art of sex and the sex of art
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In Working Girl Sophia Giovannitti considers the material and metaphorical overlap between the sexual and artistic marketplaces
, Public Seminar -
Giovannitti writes with candor and complexity about a life at the center of two of her greatest cultural preoccupations: sex and capitalism.
, Bustle, Most Anticipated Books Of Spring & Summer 2023 -
Giovannitti mines both her personal experiences as an artist and a sex worker as well as larger political ones to traces the ways the worlds of art and sex work have in common. In doing so, she finds a way to commit to art, sex, and work on her own terms - finding freedom within the larger forces at work.
, Nylon -
Giovannitti dances between memoir, art criticism, and political theory to unknot a provocative tension: how our supposedly 'sacred' fields of erotic and aesthetic experience are born out of systems of commodification.
, Vulture -
[An] incisive debut memoir...Giovannitti's explorations of controversial topics are sharp and stirring, and her provocative observations will prompt debate. This deserves to be grappled with.
Publishers Weekly -
In five chapters that move easily between cultural criticism, art theory, and sharply observed personal experience, Giovannitti raises fresh inquiries around fantasies of autonomy and authenticity in worlds heavily mediated by capital.
LIBER -
Threading together memoir and criticism, her volume charts a journey through contemporary art addressing prostitution and pornography, the blind spots of movements like MeToo, the politicized actions of sex workers, and finding a way to live beyond labor.
, e-flux -
Working Girl suggests the appeal or even revolutionary potential of relating in such an upfront, contractual manner…a cleansing element to addressing things in such blatant terms, equity in considering one's time worth good money.
, Momus -
Brilliant ... [Giovannitti's] gripping subject matter offers an accessible yet imaginative route into those intersections of sex work and the art market, from the perspective of a person with has lived experience of both.
, The List -
Art and sex have always been intertwined, but Giovannitti thinks we're getting it all wrong. Drawing on theorists and experience, both as an artist and sex worker, she avoids easy reactions like outrage, instead rethinking how everyone can benefit from a sexy inquiry into the nature of art
, The Boston Globe -
Incorporating eclectic references, from the French theory collective Tiqqun to the transgender artist Tourmaline, Working Girl is a pointillistic contemplation of labor and the varied ways we choose to contextualize and deny it. It's also a declaration of Giovannitti's confidence 'to discern for myself what is meaningful and what is bullshit' in a capitalistic landscape that shapes the most intimate parts of our lives.
, Cultured -
A personal, provocative and, above all, sharply intelligent exploration of the contemporary world, and how to survive and even thrive within it.
, Dazed -
As Giovannitti expounds on the negotiations and violations that she sees in both industries, as well as glimmering moments of community, beauty, and anarchy, she draws on her own experience and carefully crafted critical lens, rather than accepting prevailing frameworks and prefabricated imaginaries.
, Brooklyn Rail -
Giovannitti brings a fresh criticality ... when considering how expectations of intimacy and creativity intersect with workers' rights and autonomy within late-stage capitalist anxiety.
, Frieze -
Sophia's deft, precise, and intriguing in describing the everyday details of her world-and also floating thousands of feet above and seeing the whole structure move. It's one of the best things I've read recently about labor, commodification of intimacy, manufacture of fantasy, precious time on earth, the list goes on.
Purse Book -
Magnetic and erudite...[Giovannitti's] intelligence is a kind of beautiful obliteration; her disdain for work and capitalism shimmers, while also proffering the profound devotion she has for art.
, The Los Angeles Review of Books