MADDIE SEXY
Researcher, Writer, Performance Artist
Maddie is a writer, researcher, and performance artist based in London. Much of her work engages generative methodologies, particularly autotheory, autofiction, and affect theory, with a particular focus on sex work, sexuality, art, queerness, dress, and gender. Her work has been featured in the Lethaby Gallery’s YES exhibition, Crawford Art Gallery’s Muscle: A Question of Power, Dazed, Femzine, i-D, and the Wellcome Collection.
Maddie holds a research post at East London Strippers Collective (ELSC) thanks to a successful funding bid. Bridging the gap between sex work and academia one eight-inch heeled step at a time, her academic position within ELSC has seen her invited to speak at institutions such as Norwich University of the Arts and the Museum of Sex Objects, as well as designing and organising guided tours of the British Museum’s nudes and sculpture collections.
Maddie’s work as a performer has seen her nominated for a Sexual Freedom Award, and most weekends you can find her on stages across London - from the lesbian strip club to the circus, wrestling ring, and beyond. She has performed at some of London’s most iconic clubs, including Torture Garden, Sex & Rage and The Box Soho in the West End; a cabaret and variety show venue named as one of the best nightclub experiences in the world.
SEXY
SEXY
SEXY AS METHOD
I think of all my work, whether written, performance based, or visual, as autotheoretical - a methodology through which the gap between theory and practice can be bridged and is concerned with reflecting, researching, and thinking through the self, beyond the self.
Strippers and stage names are synonymous, and most often used as a way of presenting a persona that is abstracted from a dancers ‘real’ identity or character. Throughout my career I’ve gone by various names, and have now decided on something between a stage and ‘real’ name.
Maddie Sexy began as a sarcastic way of labelling myself in a way that uses part of my name, Maddie, with Sexy stemming from my experience in the sex industry and reflecting the nature of my performance work, whilst distancing myself from my legal surname as means of self preservation and opacity, particularly in online spaces. However, over time Sexy became what people began to know me as, with fewer people knowing or referring to me by my legal name.
Under this name I found expansive capacity to explore and question my identity, values, work, and experiences - more so than I could with my legal name. In terms of sexuality and respectability politics, in a society that idealises sexual discretion and desexualised self-presentation for women, Sexy reflects an autotheoretical process of becoming, or collection of ongoing experiences, highlighting the sex industry roots inherent to all my work that I wish to extend to the academic and artistic sphere. It’s for these reasons I choose to use this name for my ongoing work.
Selected Work
SPLOSH (2020)SPLOSH (2020) was produced in collaboration with graphic designer and art director Aries Moross. This visual art series draws upon elements of an ongoing performance practice exploring sex and desire through the interplay of body art, erotic dance, sugar, sex; pleasure in excess.