La fábrica y el sexo (The Factory and Sex) was produced thanks to a fellowship from the Spanish Academy in Rome in 2025. The photomontages, performance and final visual essay revolve around the three concepts announced in the paper collages: pornography, pornocracy and pornification.
The first work comprises three photomontages made from old magazines bought at flea markets and other material from online sources consulted in Italy.
The second piece is a lecture-performance on the pornography industry in Italy presented on 10 April 2025 before a live audience in the Portraits Hall at the Spanish Academy in Rome, focusing on the “uberisation” of working conditions for women in this industry and on their relocation in search of sex workers who can be paid less, as well as on the quality of pornographic images, understood as the absolute peak of our heteronormative, Western-centric, hegemonic visual system. The resulting video work is a remix of the rehearsals and the live performance, edited by Pablo Marte in collaboration with the artist.
The third work is a visual essay that examines the relationships between sex, its representations and the power structures within which they are produced, focusing particularly on women working in pornography as the “proletariat of the sex industry,” starting from the Italian socio-political context, as well as on the quality of pornography understood as the “obscene epitome” of our Western hegemonic visual system.
The essay has a triangular structure based on the concepts of pornography, pornocracy and pornification, which engage in dialogue with pornography understood as part of the sexual revolution and as a countercultural phenomenon; with the development of the traditional porn industry in Italy (particularly focused on figures such as Moana Pozzi and Cicciolina, who was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1987 for the Partito Radicale); and with the spectacularisation of politics fostered by Berlusconi and the development of the concept of the “obscenification” of the world, which unfolds in parallel with the rise to power of the new far-right movements in several countries, Italy included.
