BANGKOK, Thailand -- Southeast Asian sex workers, supported by the
United Nations, exhibited their paintings, photographs and multimedia
depicting violence, oral sex, repression under Islamic sharia law and
other personal experiences.
"Here in the corner, you see a scene of a blowjob," Vanessa Ho said in
an interview, pointing at a complex painting created by a sex worker
named Dhivithra in Singapore.
"In the second scene, you see someone negotiating money as well as
safe sex," said Ms. Ho, program coordinator of Project X, which she
described as a "human rights-based organization for sex workers in
Singapore."
The painting also displays "handcuffs on a pair of arms, symbolizing
how the sex workers are constantly being criminalized," she said.
"You see some sex workers who just focus on money, and other sex
workers keen to find love in their life. And in the bigger story
here, on the [painting's] right-hand side, is of the wedding."
The solo Singaporean entry at the art exhibition was painted by a sex
worker "inspired" by an older prostitute's true story.
The older woman "managed to find love in her life from a man who
doesn't mind that she's a sex worker, and they got married," Ms. Ho
said.
The exhibition was displayed for 10 days in April at the Bangkok Art
and Culture Center, which is a modern, multi-story gallery and
shopping mall for edgy creations by Thais and others.
The show was supported by the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP), which also provided brief "media training" to the exhibitors,
so they could practice responding to possible questions by reporters.
Several UNDP officials attended the opening, which was presided over
by Clifton Cortez, UNDP's Bangkok-based HIV/AIDS Health and
Development Regional Practice Leader.
Empower Foundation, a Thai organization founded in 1985 and led by sex
workers, staged the exhibition under Mr. Cortez's UNDP portfolio, the
show's officials said.
The show was headlined: "Yet Still We Dance! Sex Workers of ASEAN Art
Exhibition."
ASEAN refers to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and
includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The exhibition also
included East Timor.
A Thai National Human Rights Commission member and former senator, Jon
Ungphakorn, introduced the show with a speech about human rights and
legal problems for Southeast Asia's sex workers.
The exhibition described discrimination against sex workers, and their
struggle for equal rights.
Prostitution is common, but illegal, in most Southeast Asian
countries, although legal in Singapore, Ms. Ho said.
At the exhibition, sex workers from Muslim-majority Malaysia displayed
clever photographs satirizing the country's Islamic sharia law.
A Muslim woman who identified herself in an interview as Selvi, said
her sex workers' advocacy organization PAMT Malaysia hired a
photographer to portray prostitutes acting out their daily problems.
Asked if she was a sex worker, Selvi declined to answer, but said she
helped manage PAMT's financial support from The Global Fund.
In one dramatic photo, a Muslim female official wearing a traditional
Islamic headscarf, approaches a transgender sex worker dressed as a
woman in a restaurant.
"Female? TG?" the sharia official asks in the photo's voice caption,
demanding to know if the sex worker is a woman or a transgender
person.
"Shit! The religious people are here!" the distraught Malaysian
transgender sex worker says in another voice caption.
Selvi, giggling, said she donned the blue headscarf and acted as the
sharia official in the photo, while other sex workers also appeared in
the restaurant scene.
"A transgender cannot wear a dress," in many Malaysian states, because
sharia law forbids a person who was born as a male from appearing as a
female in public, Selvi said.
"We put the picture up like that, so people can see what is going on," she said.
In Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, however, sharia law is not
enforced, Selvi said.
The Philippine Sex Worker Collective also exhibited photographs.
"In the Philippines, some feminists claim to save us from being
exploited by men, the [Catholic] church wants to save our souls, and
the [Philippines] government wants to project an image that the U.S.
government approves of," the group's statement said.
The exhibition's entry by sex workers from communist Laos included
naive paintings of faces on mirrors.
"We have painted our image on these mirrors because we want to be
really seen, not just looked at," the Sao Lao group of artists said in
their statement.
The Alliance Myanmar AIDS group displayed paintings which sex workers
had designed and then commissioned professional artists to complete.
A female prostitute from Myanmar, a country also known as Burma, said
in an interview the paintings show "the feeling of the fear and the
violence that sex workers are facing right now in Myanmar."
Thailand's Empower organization contributed a fun and popular
collection of head-sized paper bags, illustrated with hand-painted
comical faces.
Visitors can select a bag, put it on their own head, and have their
photograph taken by a professional cameraman who instantly prints the
photo and pastes it on a wall alongside other people's bag-headed
portraits.
Empower said it was "hurt" when sex workers covered their faces, "as
if we were criminal," when spotlighted by the media.
Empower hoped the bags would change that behavior and perception.
"I think other people may want to join us inside these beautiful
bags," Empower said.
The Vietnamese Network of Sex Workers exhibited an "effigy" as a
demonstration "against discrimination."
"Condoms, sticking on the hat, means the sex workers consider condoms
as our protection weapon," their statement said.
"There are three, colored, smiling condoms...expressing connection
among sex workers in three regions -- north, middle and south -- of
Vietnam," they said.
The exhibit by the Cambodian Women's Network for Unity noted it was
"ignored by rescuers, donors and law makers."
East Timor's Scarlet Timor Collective offered a "life-size
representation of a human body that represents all sex workers being
woman, man and transgender."
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Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco,
California, reporting news from Asia since 1978, and recipient of
Columbia University's Foreign Correspondent's Award. He is a co-author
of three non-fiction books about Thailand, including "Hello My Big Big
Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing
Interviews; 60 Stories of Royal Lineage; and Chronicle of Thailand:
Headline News Since 1946. Mr. Ehrlich also contributed to the final
chapter, Ceremonies and Regalia, in a new book titled King Bhumibol
Adulyadej, A Life's Work: Thailand's Monarchy in Perspective.
His websites are
Flickr
(Copyright 2013 Richard S Ehrlich)