Images courtesy of Matt Weinberger, Sophie Hartnett, Daniela Friedman and Please Knock
INTRO - Ami Evelyn Hughes, Erotic Art Fair 2023
You’re standing at the gate. Wearing a pink, spiked collar and sky-308 Pleasers – during the day nonetheless – swaying in an attempt to find your balance as if an orbit could promise stasis and there was no risk of ending up with a baseball-sized ankle, swollen, inhibited by a fall from grace. It’s behind me now, or so you think, the too distant waning in the rearview, sins partially eclipsed by what feels like the sun but instead is just the devil’s wrath, recoiled. Head to the side, coaxed, it whispers, “there’s a special place for those who wear a collar and think it’s a mask.” You don’t even get to knock.
Subculture is a grave that society dances upon. The battle between the dissolution of gatekeeping in the name of “the culture” and the flippant striving to be hyperniche to vindicate singularity was neither won nor lost. Instead usurped by the endless scroll, we have entered a time in which nothing feels sacred. But, Ami Evelyn Hughes, begs to differ. As the Founder of GUT Magazine, she has created a tangible portal-cum-pages through which she can build and explore new worlds. An absolute sucker for anything old and imbued with the magic of purity sans internet fuckery, Ami is an avid collector of occult-adjacent objects and memorabilia – things with their own histories, touched and molded by magick and transgression, made in the image of provocation. Hence, it was only natural that Danna Wexler, the organizer of New York’s Second Annual Erotic Art Fair, reached out to have Ami amongst those showing their wares and derrière’s earlier this month. In fact, it was a miracle that Ami even opted to sell any of the items she did, parting ways with the objects she so aligns her core being with.
Other vendors at the fair included Claire Barrow, Veronika Vilim of CumGirl8, Vasta Archives (one of New York's pioneering erotic art dealers), Lil Mami Lani, amongst a well-rounded batch of notable artists, collectors and gallerists. The fair, held at TV Eye, was well-attended. Many flocked to these respective gates, some fueled by innocent curiosity, others naughty knowledge, and regardless of what was taken away in plastic wrap, the bigger picture reflected a subculture at battle with none other than itself. Valiant and wet, office spoke to Ami about the fair, Eurotrash and what it means when we say sex is the last frontier.
INTERVIEW - Ami Evelyn Hughes, Erotic Art Fair 2023
Lindsey Okubo: Fill me in on what went on at the fair and the pieces you’re selling!
Ami Evelyn Hughes: So Danna hit me up, she’s the organizer of the fair and asked me to be a part of it as I'm known for my work which often includes female erotica, erotica in general and straight-up porn because it’s what I perceive as art. This is the second fair and the vendors who Danna was posting before it looked absolutely amazing, I was excited to see all the collections in real life. The collections did not disappoint, better than most you’d see in an art gallery. One of the pillars of the fair was also to sign up for Erotic Art Newsletter, Danna has to circulate information this way because her Instagram gets taken down all the time. As does many of the pages of loads of these artists and that's a major reason why she wanted to do this show. For many of us who make this kind of work, there’s not really anywhere to show it.
In terms of what I sold, I had my hoodies that featured these amazing 1940’s drawings of Snow White fucking the dwarfs and stuff like that. I’ve always been obsessed with Snow White since I was a kid and so is Paul McCarthy, who's my absolute favorite artists ever, I like to fantasize that we’re basically the same. I had one remaining beach towel portraying an image of Jess Maybury in the tiniest red metallic micro bikini in front of a fridge full of red coke cans, an image from a shoot I did for GUT’s rendition of Christmas Playboy with a gothic twist and polaroids of me and some of my partners in sexual acts which are one offs. About five days before the fair, I also shot myself in a tiny outfit which is the content that you’re seeing and featured in this article. Most of my rare and extreme porn magazine and ephemera collection is in London because you’re not really able to transport it across the ocean without it getting seized, so I opted to sell some of my Big Tit and Big Girl magazines that i’ve acquired here in NYC in the last year and a few of my precious rare erotic art books that I did manage to bring with me.
Lindsey: I know last time we talked, you were telling me about how your sense of home is derived from all your “stuff’ so the fact that you sold pieces from your collection comes as quite a surprise. Does letting go feel a bit like emotional maturation?
Ami: It’s funny because as I was telling you about the pieces before I realized how much I didn’t want to sell any of it. My stuff is me, it’s my work, it’s what I love but yes, I think this is actually quite refreshing for me because I'm someone who doesn't like change. For instance, I had this little Thumper plushie that I got from my last holiday in Prague with my best friend Ed before moving to New York. When the cleaner changed my sheets at the Walker hotel, it got bundled up and taken to the wash and I never got it back. I literally think about it every week and it's been a year, I'm so attached because I put a massive emotional connection to things. Even my phone isn’t even just an iPhone because it’s where I spoke to my ex boyfriend everyday because he’s in London and I’m here and I miss him so much. Basically, I'm a hoarder and I've managed to separate myself from some of my collection and sold 50% of my favorite things and it’s a little traumatizing but also relieving. I'm being mature now though and I've sold some special rare things that I'm attached to as my goal for the last 18 months has been to save a big house deposit.
Lindsey: How does that feel?
Ami: Good, scary to be an adult now. I'm 34 but because I look so young and have a baby voice, people literally think I'm 25 so that exacerbates the feeling of being like a child.
Lindsey: Right and it’s interesting how eroticism is often perversely associated with age, ageism in women etc. and the process of rewiring that. Even in the ways in which everyone at the fair gets their work taken down, they’re constantly having to rebuild this sense of presence or how they even exist in the world.
Ami: The sense of community is real because only people in the know are going to know the value of these items. I feel like the same kind of people who are into eroticism are also people who understand what it means to protect a collection and are collectors of these more obscure, historical things. These people are generally a bit more transgressive, they don’t have double glazed windows, their apartments aren’t white and clean. I bet all the people's houses at the fair if you went to their house, it wouldn’t be hoarder-y or dirty, but there would be a shared feeling of it being cluttered with fullness, interesting interiors, a sense of things being old. I’m genuinely interested in knowing where things were originally bought, who had it and how much they cared for it, was it emotionally connected to a relationship in their life. As things age, they get more expensive but also so much gets lost and that genuinely stresses me out and I want to protect it all.
Lindsey: And the ways in which value is now tied to self-censorship and ultimately, relevance, visibility etc. Aside from this particular community being censored by the status quo, there’s a lot of ongoing self-censorship from people who uphold it. Performing and presenting the self in certain ways yields validation for people and it makes the divide between those who are more singular with their interests and their self expression more vast. It’s funny the ways in which it’s become “cool” to be into erotica but these people don’t even necessarily know that BDSM is an acronym. .
Ami: Hahah, yes I feel like that spreads out into every aspect of modern society too, as someone who works heavily in art, fashion and music, it feels that there isn't much authenticity in those younger groups simply because of the world they grew up in makes it near on impossible. I'm 34 so from birth to age 15, I had no Internet. Growing up then you couldn't be like herded sheep because you literally didn't know what other people were doing. I’m from the east midlands (Middle) of England and I had no fucking idea what someone was doing in Maryland, even in London unless there was randomly a TV program about them and even then I didn’t have sky, I only had 3 channels. So I get the limitations and maybe it does have to do with the pressure of money and success that rivals any other generation in human history.
Lindsey: Or on the flip side of that, everyone has adopted a very nihilistic attitude because of that where it’s like I know that I'm not gonna be able to afford a house, afford a car, have a family so fuck everything, the world is burning. I know there is also something to be said for creating from a place of pain or extremes but it just feels uninspired or tainted.
Ami: To your point, it feels like if people are doing creative stuff now, a lot of them are just doing it for the money –
Lindsey: or the clout and therein lies the validation part of it too which is why it becomes cool to align yourself with things like eroticism.
Ami: I was just gonna say that, they wouldn't even know about the basic BDSM rules, what happened in the AIDS pandemic, or anything like that, so then why pretend to be into it?
Lindsey: I think we’re kind of all expected to know the same things nowadays because it allows you to be a part of the cultural conversation that has globalized. Everyone today perhaps knows a lot about everything but none of that knowledge is very deep; so when you look at these subcultures of communities like who was at the fair, it was funny to see who showed up.
Ami: I was going to talk about this because I feel from what I had seen initially, 70% of the people are serious collectors and I knew that the stuff was going to be pretty intense and it was a refreshing mix of collectors and modern erotic artists
Lindsey: From what we saw, there was almost a full spectrum of attendees at the fair, all with varying levels of knowledge when it came to erotica. Can you talk us through the role of understanding and experience as it applies to knowledge in this realm?
Ami: Yeah I mean I’ve naturally been into it since early and being from Europe also gave me maybe a lot more accessibility to it at a very low cost because it’s easier to travel and ultimately be exposed to these things. From EuroTrash on TV, to Lola Ferrari, I don't know why but I've also just always found things like death and other transgressive things for a child to find interesting.
I remember being seven years old and my brother and I found our parents porn vhs tapes and it was obviously both hilarious for us and mind blowing. Visually it was so memorable, the way it was softly focused, there were lace curtains and a silk bed and the entire soft focus lacey 80s visuals are still to this day so exciting to me. I’ve tried to recreate the feel for these images and spoken to many really well-known photographers and the consensus is that there was something poisonous in the chemicals used to develop the photos and we literally aren’t able to get that same tone today because of it. From the paper used even, to the ways porn was visually laid out via ‘human photoshop’ years ago, to the graphic design of it all, you don’t get the layouts, covers, poses, you did then, it's genuinely amazing.
Lindsey: Transgressive as a word sticks out from what you said because it then raises the question of why it is transgressive. These images provoke a visceral reaction but why is our reaction to them at all moral.
Ami: Right and even for you and me as people who are very open, it still is literally someone being fucked in broad daylight with cum in their eyes
Lindsey: Yeah and it’s interesting that society as a whole is seemingly more open or receptive to nudity, brazen sexuality, thirst traps etc. which is great but –
Ami: It’s art censorship too and that’s another reason why I love this. When you were talking I also was thinking about how these women aren’t plus size at all but they're also not this fashion model body so maybe that's something that excited me as well as someone who's been plus sized since I was like being born (11lbs at birth). They have boobs, bums and sometimes they're a bit more fleshy, which I just find visually really beautiful like old renaissance paintings.
Lindsey: Right, it just feels a bit more real which is refreshing but only because the duality exists of everything feeling fabricated and not knowing what actually is “real.”
Ami: Arghh honestly my daily frustration, I do think retouching often ruins the image. In these 70s, 80s porn mags i’m talking about the woman looked so real and sexual in such a visceral way, the frizziness of the hair would look like a halo because of the lighting, she might have stretchmarks showing inside her thighs which just makes her more tangible and makes you want to fuck, you want to touch her because she feels real.
Lindsey: Right and that’s maybe why we’re gravitating towards things like erotica nowadays because nothing feels real and there’s a tangibility to it when the general climate reads: numb.
Ami: Right that might be why as well, good point. I don't really think I should have been born in this generation, I feel disconnected because everything's so digital (fake). Don’t get me wrong I love Instagram, I’m on Instagram and I love my thirst traps. For me it’s funny when you think of an office worker wearing latex and a spiked collar to a rave, and that’s not a problem at all, but I guess we're just having the discussion about authenticity. At the same time, if that’s what it takes for people to not be so uptight, then go for it but what we're trying to say is we don't want to lose that sense of community which so many subcultures have lost. That's the only thing about it getting too mainstream, isn't it? Because then it can ruin the actual meaning and history of the thing, like tattooing.
Lindsey: I literally got the craziest Instagram ad the other day that was like, “learn how to tattoo in Bushwick” and you get one free drink. It’s literal hipsters with gloved hands tattooing on fruit.
Ami: Yes! This is the perfect example of what we’re saying. I don’t want it to get like that, you want to gatekeep it a bit because it is really special
Lindsey: Yeah I don’t think gatekeeping is always a bad thing, it actually allows for singularity and if it's not for you, it's not for you and maybe there’s something to be said for preservation’s sake. Even us using the word “authenticity” feels a bit wrong to use in this conversation.
Ami: Agreed, it’s essential sometimes though and I feel like I’m a historian with this - I want to just keep this safe! I also feel icky using that word but it’s not just eroticism that needs to be protected, it’s a lot of subcultures. Goths. Where have the goths gone? It genuinely upsets me that there are no goths. My ideal boyfriend is either Digga D (big crush) or that classic 80s really pale guy with long black hair, wearing a leather trench coat and I never see that guy anymore, not in New York, not in London, maybe in Scotland? Maybe that's where I have to go.
Lindsey: Right and I’m thinking about the word “consent” in relation to not just sex but the ways we are fed information. Even the notion of something being transgressive without our consent in terms of exposure or visibility and the echo chamber is also filled with cries for “empowerment” whilst still shaming those who opt to use their bodies.
Ami: When we’re thinking about women who want to do sex work for instance and they’re happy, feel safe, confident and have the right kind of mental framework, you often see their relationship and view of men change, they’re not intimidated at all anymore and that’s really enjoyable and empowering. At one point in time people were making real big money from this and I hate when the sex trafficking side of things always gets brought into the conversation because millions of women who are working class providing for their families on OnlyFans, buying houses, providing for their families, and all the things they wished for as little girls just by selling photos from their own homes. To me that's amazing, that's serious hustle, takes a lot of time and energy and confidence.
Lindsey: Right and the ways in which we’re expected to compartmentalize these parts of our being is interesting where it’s like you as a sexual thing isn’t who you are at the office.
Ami: I like to be myself all the time which is why I have a hard time being in a corporate environment. I don’t know you well enough but I assume you’re sexually out there because we’re into the same things, but say a stranger might perceive you wearing this long baggy top and thinks you’re covering yourself up so you’re not sexually adventurous? I don't know if there's the same thing in America but one of the biggest things always spoken about by the current English Youtube stars will always be around this question of how many bodies does a girl have? It’s this thing that conflates sex and promiscuity with ideas of being a good person or good enough. It’s like you have bad values if you slept with more than like 9 people and if any less then you’re an angel.
Lindsey: Right and how much of that is related to that same fear we were talking about before related to self-censorship in not wanting to even give yourself away. Or on the flip side, wanting to be so reckless with it and not exploring the nuances of intimacy versus the act of sex etc.
Ami: Why is there so much value put on sex, who you've had sex with and how many times and stuff?
Lindsey: I guess in the past, we’ve put such an emphasis on monogamy and that is tangential to stability. But today that’s evolving and we are sexually liberated and empowered but perhaps don’t understand it as fully as we should.
Ami: Yes. Maybe another reason why these magazines – to bring it back to the fair – feels so special is that say there is this girl, we’ll call her Tammy, and she’s posting her nudes on Instagram. But say Tammy was living in 1985 and she did it in the porn industry and there's only 50 copies of this magazine with these beautiful nudes of her and that's why to me they feel so precious, like precious antique diamonds or something. But now obviously with Instagram everyone can access these images but maybe only 50 people had these pictures of Tammy in 1985, isn’t that cool?
Lindsey: Right and is that only more desirable because of the context of time?
Ami: To me, yeah. I'm sure most people, it doesn't bother them or it’s not what they think about, but I love these snapshots of time. I feel like if I had been in my teens in the early 80s, my late teens to the end of 80s and then in my 20s in the 90s, I'd be a millionaire. I would have created some amazing website that kicked off. I feel so sorry for the generation behind us, the saturation levels are insane. I watched something yesterday and it said in the last 20 years, the human race has risen by about 2 billion, which is insane. How can you expect to get your dream job, to be singular, to stand out and to have created something truly new? Can you actually even do anything new anymore? And that makes me so sad.
Lindsey: Yeah well now we have AI.
Ami: My worst nightmare. I genuinely think about this on my own time, I'm depressed about it, which is another reason maybe why I like these old magazines. I love things made with hands, the human brain, the human touch. I know that's not the way to think now but that's just my way. AI is gonna really shift the entire landscape of the workforce and it’s going to be apocalyptic, like demon chaos mode.
Lindsey: Right and we’re even seeing in humanity today with things like TikTok everything has to be in the same format, it needs to be this long, it has to look like this, blah blah blah.
Ami: We are being formatted already! I absolutely agree with you. I think it also obviously adds to our point where someone is in the moment, having sex, just enjoying it. I find the constant filming of everything really depressing. I even saw this video of this girl trying to pull a sheep out of the mud, like yoinking it, and someone is filming her instead of helping. We’re honestly like clowns.
Lindsey: Right and it creates such a barrier to experience and you can’t do that really with sex which makes it also the allure of it.
Ami: Right! Of course everyone wants to film it but that’s very interesting and a good point! It probably is one of the last authentic things in that sense because it’s one of the few things that can't be filmed.
Lindsey: Right but that even is becoming mainstream.
Ami: Totally and if you’re doing it for OnlyFans and making money that’s great but as absolutely out there as I am sexually, I don't want to be filmed when I'm having sex because it takes me out of the moment. It's private and I love it to be private. Because what else do you do that's truly private? Maybe when you eat with a friend inside a house?
Lindsey: Right but I mean, phone eats first?
Ami: [laughs] exactly! Shout out to my silly little food blog @buffscranandsnacks Yeah sex is the only thing really where the phone doesn’t come first, that’s so true. That’s probably why I love sex so much, it’s the last old-fashioned thing and I don’t think it can be ruined.
Lindsey: Right and even with the fair, it’s kind of the last frontier and yet, here comes exposure. Sure there have been technological innovations but there’s something to be said for just body on body and you can’t recreate it.
Ami: Yeah, nothing like having my chubby cheeks kissed in private.