Inside London’s Museum of Sex

Last year, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Ezekiel spent some time inside the UK’s biggest gay sauna (or, as they like to call it, ​“gay Dis­ney­land”) – a for­mer army base sit­u­at­ed on the edge of North­wich in Cheshire. Only acces­si­ble via car, the vast, bru­tal­ist build­ing is a two-floor trea­sure trove of hedo­nism, boast­ing, yes, a sauna, steam room, and jacuzzi, but also play­rooms, a glo­ry hole cor­ri­dor, and sex-free spaces to socialise in. The bi, trans, and cou­ple-friend­ly sauna was estab­lished in 2005, but recent­ly had a grand reopen­ing, of sorts, after a part-refur­bish­ment – and Ezekiel was there to cap­ture it all.

“I some­how man­aged to weave my way into the space and make friends with the own­er,” they explain. ​“She’s this love­ly mid­dle-aged mum who lives in Essex, and she let me come down for two days to shoot the open day. It was a real­ly fun expe­ri­ence. And at the end of my shift, the man­ag­er was like, ​‘Do you want to grab a tow­el?’, so I went out on my own, had my fun in the sauna, and took these amaz­ing doc­u­men­tary pho­tos of this insane world, which hasn’t real­ly been doc­u­ment­ed in this time and age.”

It’s serendip­i­tous, then, that hav­ing doc­u­ment­ed this muse­um of sex, a hand­ful of these inti­mate, ebul­lient pho­tos – the full series of which Ezekiel, the cre­ative direc­tor of pho­to project SMUT, hopes to one day turn into a pho­to book – are set to be dis­played in their own Muse­um of Sex, an exhi­bi­tion co-curat­ed by SMUT and Duende, a non-prof­it, nomad gallery and publisher.

Run­ning for two days only – from June 20 – 21 – the exhi­bi­tion will be on dis­play at Safe­house 1 in Peck­ham, south east Lon­don, and, along­side a peek into Ezekiel’s sauna project, will fea­ture mul­ti­me­dia works from nine inter­na­tion­al artists, includ­ing film­mak­ers, painters, and ceram­i­cists, all of whom explore themes of eroti­cism, sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der, and the body.

“The whole premise of SMUT is to shake up the erot­ic and art worlds, and to bring in new points of view, new tal­ent, and to real­ly spot­light things that aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly through a white male gaze,” says Ezekiel. ​“And so with The Muse­um of Sex, I want­ed to cham­pi­on queer and trans artists, artists from the East and West, and gen­er­al­ly those who are cre­at­ing excit­ing work around sex and sexuality.”

Among the fea­tured works are expres­sion­ist nudes by Ital­ian artist Inès Mich­e­lot­to, who paints her friends in the queer com­mu­ni­ty; Amer­i­can artist Ion Birch​’s sur­re­al, dream-like draw­ings of cow­boy boot-clad orgies and super­sized dicks; col­lages by Ebun Sodipo, from the UK, who reap­pro­pri­ates found imagery to cre­ate a future for Black trans women by pro­duc­ing or exca­vat­ing their his­to­ry; and a film about rub­ber com­modi­ties by Sin­ga­pore­an artist Bart Seng Wen Long, whose work explores fetishism, which fea­tures what looks like a 3D rub­ber ren­der­ing of Boris Johnson’s head.

This mix of beau­ty, eroti­cism, and absur­di­ty is exact­ly what Ezekiel was striv­ing for. ​“With SMUT, we try not to take our­selves too seri­ous­ly,” they explain. ​“And we kind of poke fun at peo­ple in the art world who do so. It’s the same with sex, espe­cial­ly in the UK, to the point where everyone’s scared to talk about it or be open about it. Even now, we’re actu­al­ly regress­ing, which is scary. So I want­ed to include artists who had a sense of humour to their work; a wink, wink, nudge, nudge kind of thing. Sex is just quite fun­ny, and it shouldn’t be tak­en so seriously.”

One of these artists is Urara Tsuchiya, a Japan­ese ceram­i­cist, whose sub­ver­sive­ly kitsch works depict tiny, naked peo­ple, often engaged in some sort of sex act. Fit­ting­ly, the piece she’s dis­play­ing at The Muse­um of Sex is a ceram­ic sauna doll­house. ​“I’m inter­est­ed in the awk­ward and uncom­fort­able laugh­ter that eroti­cism can bring,” she tells Huck. ​“Play­ful­ness is some­thing that makes it eas­i­er for peo­ple to engage. Also my works tend to be labour inten­sive, so I want to make some­thing that’s fun­ny to me.” Though, she admits, ​“it wears off after long hours work­ing on it, but it’s nice if oth­ers can still find it funny”.

But while The Muse­um of Sex suc­ceeds in hav­ing fun with what is osten­si­bly a fun top­ic, it also does take sex seri­ous­ly, sim­ply by show­ing it. At the heart of the exhi­bi­tion is a deter­mi­na­tion to bring these artists and their work into the phys­i­cal world, giv­ing them a tem­po­rary respite from dig­i­tal spaces that are increas­ing­ly policed, cen­sored, and hos­tile to any­one who dares broach the top­ic of sex.

“We for­get how sex is still to this day seen as cor­rupt­ing and sin­ful for the mass­es, which makes our work more fun to explore, [but means we have] to be more cre­ative in get­ting it seen,” says Tom Sel­mon, a Lon­don-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er and mag­a­zine edi­tor, whose erot­i­ca film about the jux­ta­po­si­tion of inner play and naive­ness and sex­u­al­i­ty and self-plea­sure will fea­ture in the exhi­bi­tion. ​“I want­ed to be a part of this because I want­ed my film to be seen out­side of the inter­net realm. Espe­cial­ly when you’re work­ing with erot­i­ca, that real life tex­ture and sen­su­al­i­ty is so impor­tant for audi­ences to get the full impact of what you’re try­ing to convey.”

You only need to look at the The Muse­um of Sex​’s own poster, which is blurred to be social media friend­ly, as a stark exam­ple of the urgent need for IRL spaces to, as Ezekiel puts it, ​“ful­ly expe­ri­ence and enjoy the erot­ic out­side of our phones”.

“It’s scary that [social media] kind of guides people’s moral com­pass­es on what’s right and wrong with­in the art world,” they add. ​“Some artists are too scared to make explic­it or hon­est work because they’re scared that they’ll be banned or flagged for vio­lat­ing guide­lines, which is insane. That shouldn’t stop you from mak­ing the sort of work that you want to make. But it’s hard because that’s where most of us have an audi­ence and make our income.”

This is part of the rea­son that Duende makes for a log­i­cal part­ner. ​“We’ve always been about bring­ing emerg­ing artists togeth­er and pro­vid­ing a plat­form to show­case their work,” says co-founder Sophie Ham­bling, who estab­lished Duende in 2017 with her part­ner Shahram Saa­dat. ​“Artists don’t always have the oppor­tu­ni­ty out­side of the uni­ver­si­ty sphere – it feels like it goes from uni­ver­si­ty shows to estab­lished gal­leries, and there’s no in between. So we want­ed to use our­selves and our net­work as a platform.”

Although Duende hasn’t explored the worlds of sex and eroti­cism before, Ham­bling hopes thatThe Muse­um of Sex will ​“shed light on what’s seen as a taboo world, and re-edu­cate peo­ple about how art can be per­ceived and how it should be inter­act­ed with in a space”.

Safe­house 1 – a derelict house with mul­ti­ple rooms and lev­els – was part­ly cho­sen for its inter­ac­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties. The cav­i­ties and cor­ners of the space make you feel like you’re always dis­cov­er­ing some­thing new. ​“We’re show­ing peo­ple a new way of see­ing sex,” says Ezekiel, ​“and they’re dis­cov­er­ing whole new per­spec­tives.” A nod to the New York cul­tur­al hub of the same name, the choos­ing of The Muse­um of Sex as the title of the exhib­it is no acci­dent. ​“I just think it’s a great way of encap­su­lat­ing the dif­fer­ent types of work that we have in one space,” they explain. ​“The idea was to curate the envi­ron­ment like a muse­um, where it invites you to walk around and real­ly exam­ine what’s on display.”

Offer­ing an unin­hib­it­ed view of sex, sex­u­al­i­ty, and bod­ies, and invit­ing peo­ple to think and talk about these top­ics is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in the UK (and beyond) right now – not just at a time of suf­fo­cat­ing online cen­sor­ship, but also as more women are being inves­ti­gat­ed after abor­tions or even nat­ur­al preg­nan­cy loss, sex edu­ca­tion and trans rights are under threat, and hate crimes against mar­gin­alised groups con­tin­ue to rise.

“When things like this hap­pen, our world kind of flour­ish­es because we push against it,” says Ezekiel. ​“With queer cul­ture in gen­er­al, we push against any­one who’s try­ing to dimin­ish us or bring us down. If we don’t fight back, it won’t get any bet­ter for us. So we’re doing this exhi­bi­tion to nor­malise these conversations.”

Seri­ous­ness aside, which – remem­ber! – is anti­thet­i­cal to the ethos of SMUT and The Muse­um of Sex, Ezekiel just wants peo­ple to have fun. ​“I want them to be like, ​‘Wow, that was a real­ly cool exhi­bi­tion. I real­ly enjoyed that cura­tion and all the work I saw’,” they con­clude. ​“I don’t want peo­ple to see this as some­thing super seri­ous; I want them to enjoy it.”

The Muse­um of Sex is on dis­play 6pm-9pm June 20 and 12pm-7pm June 21 at Safe­house 1 in Peck­ham, south east London.

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