pinned.events

Created with a 2025 grant from the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, this project by María Ruido is structured around three linked ideas introduced in the paper collages: pornography, pornocracy, and pornification. The first part consists of three photomontages made from magazines bought in local markets and internet materials consulted in Italy. The second is a lecture-performance presented live on 10 April 2025 in the Portrait Room of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, focusing on the pornography industry in Italy, the “uberization” of working conditions in the sector, and the outsourcing of production in search of sex workers who can be paid less. It also examines pornographic images as the extreme peak of a dominant Western, heteronormative, and Eurocentric visual system. The video outcome combines the recorded performance with the earlier essays, edited by Pablo Marte in collaboration with the artist. The third part is a visual essay on the relationship between sex, its representations, and the power structures in which they are produced, with particular attention to porn workers as the “proletariat of the sex industry” within the Italian socio-political context and to pornography as the obscene epitome of a dominant Western visual regime.