I am still in awe (and exhaustion) from [K]INK OUT. We, the community of tattoo artists, sex workers, kink & leather folx and our allies, raised over $35,000 to support those sex workers who are most in need. ​

Original Mission Statement: Kink Out is intended to bring intersectional NYC individuals of BDSM/kink identities together to share space, art, work, and respectful conversation. This event is for us to out ourselves to one another and build alliances. It’s also a safe space to play safely.


Kink Out was started by Yin Q as a community art and conversation event to crowdfund Mercy Mistress, an autobiographical web-series about a Queer, Asian American Dominatrix in NYC, but it has evolved into something paramount. Kink Out events have become a call to action for community care and practical support for sex workers whose livelihoods have been impacted by the recent passing of the bills SESTA/FOSTA.

The inaugural Kink Out event, hosted at a beautiful bondage dojo/photographic studio in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, attracted a diverse crowd of kinksters: Gay Leather Daddies, Femme Dominatrixes and their submissive men, Queer Leather Fairies, Bootblacks, puppies, Latex Lovers, Shibari enthusiasts, and more. Artwork, short film, comedic readings, and lap dance performances fueled an evening of panel conversations focused on topics such as kink sex work and consent-driven-community building.

The second chapter of Kink Out, co-produced by activist/artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden for her CLUB installation at Performance Space in New York City, brought forth the fruits of that initial crowdfunding labor: a screening of Mercy Mistress. The black box gallerystudio housed McClodden’s tribute to Keith Haring (a ceiling of red roses), and video and sound installations by McClodden and other artists called on the memory of S&M clubs in the Lower East Side from the early 1980’s by McClodden and other artists, and a private whiskey bar that offered a VR experience of Tokyo’s underground gay scene.

Presently, Kink Out founder, Yin Q, has joined forces with Sex Worker Activist/Artistic Producer Emily Iris; Queer Leather Daddy, Bridget Conway-Taylor, who by day is an Operations Strategist in corporate America; Tattooist/International Ms Bootblack KD Diamond; and Sex Worker Ally/Artist Media Manager Allison Brainard. Together, this X-Womxn team is producing the next iteration of Kink Out, celebrating the art and intersection of tattoos with the leather and sex work communities.

Slated for this Sunday, November 4th, the aptly titled [K]INK OUT fundraiser has garnered the participation of over 70 tattoo artists and BDSM/kink practitioners and offers on-site flash tattoos by nine local tattooists, as well as bootblacking, kink experiences, and rope bondage performances. [K]INK OUT is being held at Lot45 in Bushwick, Brooklyn from 3-11pm. Though pre-book tickets have sold out, the Kink Out team urge everyone to come: door admission is still available, as are opportunities to get flash tattoos, boots shines, and spanked!

Onsite tattoo artists include:
Kati Vaughn
KD Diamond
kpham
Mitus Andronica
Monikka Velvet
Ariel W.
Childish Rebellion
Christina Gemora
Marian Machismo

Tattoos and artworks donated by popular artists such as Tamara Santibañez, Johnny Gloom, Curtis Montgomary, and Taticompton (to name just a few) are being auctioned and sold on the night. An A-list lineup of NYC Dominatrixes and kink tops are throwing down with floggers and whips at a seven-foot-high St. Andrew’s Cross. DaemonumX is performing rope bondage suspension and Mistress Couple plans to entrap a human inside a balloon. Fetish models are selling raffle tickets for prizes donated by our local pain and pleasure stores: Purple Passion, Pleasure Chest, and PleaseNY.

ALL PROCEEDS will support Lysistrata, a mutual care fund for sex workers whose livelihoods have been depleted and endangered due to the recent passing of SESTA/FOSTA, bills that take away the online resources that sex workers use to work safely.

As mainstream society sneers at the sex industry, and disregards the violence escalating against the workers, those within sex work communities and allies are organizing and volunteering their time and labor to help one another. While most of the stereotypes about sex workers should be shredded, perhaps that which holds true is the heart of gold.


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Fini, b1907-d1996, was an incredible female artist whose work has been neglected too long. Her art and life philosophies (on polyamory, androgyny, power...) were the predecessors for many of the iconic images that we see today  in modern art. 
YOU MUST SEE THIS EXHIBIT!! 
 curated by Lissa Rivera

See the power of her work in person at The Museum of Sex. "While Fini maintained friendships with her almost entirely male artist counterparts, she steadfastly rejected not only the woman-as-muse views of the movement's leader, André Breton, but also art history's centuries-old approach to one of its most popular subjects—the female nude. (Not to mention any notions of gender norms, which are of course still popular to this day.) As much as Fini stood out at the time, though, it's only now, more than two decades after her death, that the artist is getting her due. Her first-ever American museum survey, "Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire, 1930-1990," which is on view at the Museum of Sex in New York through May 2019, showcases just how much Fini's often humorous work differs from your usual erotica; decades before any discussion of the so-called "female gaze," Fini was known for upending the very concept of the nude in art by objectifying the men, not the women, in her paintings—an approach since embraced by the likes of Andy Warhol and Madonna. Take a look, here."
by 
Stephanie Eckardt in W Magazine