The Erotic Project, curator and writer Aubrié Costello’s product of pandemic brainstorming, is a testament to queer and BIPOC sexuality and the tenderness of its aesthetics. It is comprised of silk graffiti flags, short films, and photography to frame the climax of the project – the Soft book, a limited-edition erotic collectors’ publication.
Tucked inside the Asian Arts Initiative, an exhibition and community outreach space highlighting Asian American and other BIPOC voices, the exhibit opens with silk tapestries appliqued with seductive messages or sensual instructions framing a projector canvas. In dreamy shots of the ocean in blue hour, Costello curates a short film with the previews of intimacy and sexuality found in Soft through juxtaposing nudity and semi-nudity against a natural landscape. In the back of the exhibit, there are posters of models and artists from the book superimposed by quotes about sex, Capitalism, and the body. Costello’s strategic direction cues the ongoing theme of this exhibit where marginalized bodies, often denied intrinsic humanity or tenderness in the perception of their sexual pleasure are boldly confronted as agents naturally and spiritually connected to their pleasure.
Soft is the clear highlight of this exhibit, with a meticulous reading nook for it staged, lit, and made delicately clandestine at the center of the room. There’s an ochre wood bench and patterned floor cushions to welcome a potential reader, and additional erotic poetry books and novels by authors in Soft and who know Costello personally line floating shelves behind the seating. With a rainbow projection lamp casting an ambient rainbow over a row of books by the floor cushion, the reading space serves as a secluded interactive sanctuary for an audience to take their time in appreciating the grand publication project and letting their minds wander.
The book itself is as luxurious to the touch as it is to the visual senses. The paper weight is heavy and its cover feels akin to a soft-cover coffee table art book. Inside its pages are 40+ local and international artists’ handwritten letters, photoshoots styled in the same neutral color palette as the rest of the book, screenshots of iPhone “notes app poetry,” written sexual instructionals, interviews with erotic cultural workers, softcore pornographic poems, and hardcore poems. The book even includes modeling in the buff and narrative essays from the editor-curator herself.
Some of the most demonstrative works in this book are poems by Dáe Lee and Raquel Salas Rivera, placed on the opposite page of sultry photoshoots, that are succinctly constructed to be meditative. Carefully, they guide the reader in figurative, imaginative language through how a reader can pleasure themselves. Raquel Salas Rivera is a former Philadelphia Poet Laureate. Their poem, titled “KNOT” on page 53 of the book possesses the lines “Pay attention to each sensation. Move intuitively. Once you find the best rhythm and pattern.” The language Rivera uses invokes mindfulness concepts, or connecting the mind and body to each other through innate awareness of one’s space and place at that time, with sexual pleasure. Dáe Lee’s neighboring poem “SOUL” includes lines like “Lean into the tenderness and stillness your soul needs in this moment through your vulnerability, your honesty. Ask yourself – what does it mean to feel your soul?” These deeply spiritual lines were used to describe concepts of mindfulness but in self-identifying the body.
Costello’s intentional curation of poetry in the book helps assign aestheticism and mind-body work as a part of sexuality. As an ongoing pandemic project, Costello champions mental healing and sexuality as a part of wellness in an era of medical uncertainty. Understanding the erotic and pleasurable functions of the human body, sexual interactions as an ongoing healing routine, and the somatic aspect of sex are intrinsic to Soft’s message. More than an attempt at profound subversion of what queer and BIPOC sexuality should look like or be perceived as The Erotic Project seeks to celebrate and comfort the often villanized sexuality of its cohort and intended audience. Furthermore, this part of The Erotic Project hones the tenderness of an aesthetic by emphasizing softness, whether it is through marginalized bodies in a unified color palette depicted vulnerably or in a color palette similar to the natural world the entrance piece suggests.
The Erotic Project is an exhibit in the Asian Arts Initiative’s current 18+ erotic gallery shows. It is on view now until July 8th. For accessibility questions, access to free tickets, and gallery hours, please visit the Asian Arts Initiative website.
