For ‘Unveiled Desires,’ Eva Oh Brings Surrealist Art and Sex Work Into One Room
When I ask Eva Oh, a London-based dominatrix, to respond to sex work pioneer Margo St. James’s claim that ‘it takes about two minutes to politicize a hooker,’ she laughs and says, “Oh, less than that.” I am speaking to Oh in conjunction with the art exhibition Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism 1880-Today at Richard Saltoun Gallery. Part I of the show, subtitled Fetish, Power and Subversion presents us with the magic of fetish. A seductive realm, full of contradictions and unsolvable riddles.
In November, Oh moderated a conversation at the gallery with fetish writer Anastasiia Fedorova and featured artist Anna Sampson. During the talk, they expanded on fetish’s underlying themes, including the most obvious: intimacy. “When people come to me they are here to surrender into a vulnerable and emotional space that I really enjoy leaning into and utilizing,” Oh explained confidently with captivating warmth and clear articulation.
Later, I look over her press shots and am particularly taken by the full body latex garments that transform her into an otherworldly avatar. The shiny materials wrap her body in a hermetic seal. A barrier that creates distance and simultaneously amplifies allure. This paradoxical interplay between distance and allure is characteristic of the fetish object.
By and large, early Surrealists depicted women either as muses or objects of desire. Penny Slinger’s collages, on view at the gallery, subvert these familiar tropes, while still embodying female sexuality. Themes of motherhood are situated next to a disfigured, self-pleasuring woman. The nude female is presented as erotic and grotesque, vulnerable yet in charge of herself. Slinger’s The Orgasm serves as the feature image of the show and strikes an ethereal tone. We see a female face mounted on a pitch-black background. Her eyes are closed while her mouth is slightly agape. The orifice reads as a portal to an unknown world. A glimpse of the other side. The work references the French expression for climax, le petite mort (mini death). The link between sex and death is, too, a fetishist terrain.
The show puts Surrealist originators in dialogue with contemporary practitioners. Works from Bona de Mandiargues’ series La Lubricità (1970) interpret femininity in the form of a monstrous snail, to present the body as a de-erotized zone. While Pierre Moliniers Sur le pavois (1968-70), an amalgamation of nylon-clad legs, displays a highly sexualised yet gender ambiguous glory hole phantasmagoria. Contemporary works such as Helen Chadwick’s intestine still lifes, Meat Abstract No.5 (Variation) (1989) link to Jesse Darling’s Material Girl (2014) a corporeal staging of a plastic bag suspended on meat hooks.
In Oh’s domme work, bodies are controlled through materials, and both are there to worship. She explains: “It’s all [materials and individual body parts] a variation of the same thing. It’s just like, uncomfortable, unusual, precious, like very easily destroyed materials that are completely impractical. So we fetishize them, maybe for that specific reason. Fetish is a very heavy experience, an obsession really.”
Obsession is present in the masochistic works of Sampson and Ajamu. The pleasure of debasing oneself carries the paradoxical tension of fetishism. BDSM intertwines dark and destructive forces with a positive reclamation of agency. The fantasy of humiliation is engaged with, in a space separate to everyday life. However, since stigmatisation of erotic labor is sadly a reality for dommes, escorts, and other SWs alike, separation becomes impossible. A determining factor that contributes to permanency for many who enter the industry. “It will follow you forever,” Oh explains. “Financial freedom is a huge component in order to be free from the patriarchy,” she continues. The patriarchy has laid the basis for the profession’s stigma, which may harm workers who try to make their exit.
Within fetish compliance and rebellion, subversion and power are indistinguishable parts of one another the exhibition shows. Curator Maudji Mendel’s choice of Oh to moderate the panel is unconventional but reflects their feminist agenda, which includes platforming overlooked and systematically erased perspectives. They curated the exhibition as part of RAW Contemporary (Rediscovering Art by Women) programming, an arts organisation of which they are an artistic director.
During my conversation with Oh, I find out that she continued to remain discreet about her escorting work, long before she was out as a domme: “I avoided sharing for the longest time. I didn’t yet understand myself, but I knew there was a stigma but now I’m at a point where I’ll put me sucking cock on my timeline, and I’m like, ‘Fuck all of you.’ ‘Cause you know I’m at the top of my game and I am happy to put this out there. Is that going to ruin your reality a little bit? Better!”
There is a hierarchy within sex work, amongst workers and outsiders, the whorearchy. Oh traces it back to the act of penetration as a tool of destruction throughout the centuries: “There’s a lot of historical context why penetration is such a charged act. Rape is one of the main things that happens in war and in conflict, in trying to overtake a little village or just within a marriage. Penetration has and is used as a negative tool.” Observing the whorearchy, since the ‘classic’ pro-domme denies penetration as a part of her services, the domme occupies a more respected position in civil society than an escort, who has penetrative sex with her clients.
As my final question, I ask Oh if she ever gets asked if sex work is good or bad, right or wrong. She replies: “I think it’s more a question of work. Like, is work right or wrong? I think that’s probably the bigger question. And then we can think about why sexuality is such a hot topic. I would rather nobody have to work at all, and then what are people going to choose to do with their time?” Probably have more sophisticated sex, and perhaps make more art about it.
Unveiled Desires, Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1880 is on view through February 28, 2026 at Richard Saltoun, 41 Dover Street, London. Part II On Erotic Surrealism – Identity, Desire and the Body, will be opening in January 2026.
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