Open Letter to Bo and Zipco, from Open Sex Worker & Artist Lindsay Dye
_________________________________________________________________I have not called out individual people (or even corporations) who have copied my artwork. Of course it’s happened, multiple times. It takes an immense amount of emotional and physical energy that I prefer to preserve for myself. Furthermore, I’m aware I do not own cake-sitting, I am not the cake police.
However, I will not do a disservice to my education, my art career or my intellectual property by not speaking about a particular ‘gallery’ (I use the term loosely) and an artist who must’ve browsed work on my website from 2012 to present day, drove to Burger King and ordered the Lindsay Dye special. The story is layered, so stick with me. _______________________________________________________________________________
Superchief is owned by two dudes, Ed Zipco and Bill Dunleavy. In 2015 I performed at Superchief and met Zipco during the opening and closing nights of Insuh Yoon’s photo show, who they also represented at the time. Yoon is now a known predator in the SW community. A result of many women, including myself, speaking out about his abusive behavior. We received pushback from Superchief, they gaslighted us, asked ‘Why’d you work with him then?’ ‘But he has a girlfriend’ ‘His work sells’ and the usual rhetoric received when reporting a man to other men. They continued to work with Yoon through 2016, as of now it does not look like they represent him.
How did I find out I was banned from this gallery? In 2018 I agreed to an interview for what I thought was a zine of sex worker stories. Mind you, this interview was recorded and I said a lot of incriminating information about myself and the sex work community because the interviewer did a good job of assuring me that they were an ally. As we were wrapping up, she told me she was current staff at Superchief, that she “just wanted to meet me” and that Zipco informed her I was “86ed from the gallery space” because I was an “instigator” for speaking out against Insuh Yoon. The sex work zine was never published because there was no sex work zine.
I explain all of this to prove that not only does Superchief know who I am and what I do as an artist and performer, but they also ban sex workers from their spaces for speaking out against abusers framing it as “instigating.” I think it’s obvious at this point they do not respect the safety or privacy of sex workers. _______________________________________________________________________________
In the summer of 2019, Superchief had a group show featuring an artist, Bo Chapli (@bozheana). You can see that they stole from a smattering of my work from over the years, not only visual elements like a stand-in audience but actual concepts about family and abuse that are symbolized in the props I chose. A combination of (1) I Don’t See Nothing Wrong, 2012, a performance about family, childhood sexual abuse and the neighborhood I grew up in (2) Family, 2014, wall-piece about interracial relationships (3) Public Sittings, est. 2015, my current performative practice about fetish, sex work and power dynamics.
Chapli graduated from Parsons with a BFA in Photography this year. I graduated from Pratt with an MFA in Photography in 2014. I moved to NYC in 2011 to work at Aperture. Chapli’s copied work was not only shown at Superchief, but also Aperture for their thesis show. The only coincidence in this story (or maybe not) is our Aperture affiliation. Chapli and I also share a photo professor, Justine Kurland, who I worked with at Pratt when I was Asst. to the Chair in the Photography Department. I mention this because I speculate they were encouraged to make this work by this professor, who is familiar with both of us. The copied work is being sold in book form and prints for $600.
I’m not mad at Chapli. They know the work they made is a direct rip off and that’s on them to figure out how they want to navigate their art career moving forward in NYC or beyond. Their dishonesty while making art will not serve them, it will catch up with them, it’s a small city— the art world is smaller and even smaller— the sex work world. On top of stealing, Bo Chapli, a person that is not a sex worker, is appropriating a stigmatized fetish act that they would not otherwise perform.
Superchief showed this work vindictively. Not because they believed in it, it was a way for them to invalidate me as an artist for speaking out against a predator romping around Brooklyn assaulting sex workers. They do not think I deserve to be taken seriously or recognized. This is not a new game I’m playing, I’m invalidated everyday for making art while being a sex worker, told I cannot be both, they cancel each other out, one is an excuse for the other.
I expect nothing out of this, everyone involved seems like an asshole. I do recommend reading a book or an academic paper sometime. My suggestions: Dirty Commerce: Artwork and Sexwork since the 1970s by Julia Bryan-Wilson or Angry Women by Juno Books and RE/ search Publications.
Enjoy learning something but mostly, un-learning. _______________________________________________________________________________
Lindsay Dye
MFA Photography Pratt Institute ’14 Sex Worker & Artist