Alone in my Mothers attic in rural Devon is not where I thought my path as an Erotic Activist would begin, but the generosity of hindsight has allowed me to realise the conditions could not have been more perfect. The Pandemic it seems, was the secret ingredient I needed to force my inner landscape to spill and spiral out, allowing what was in my heart to become my mode of creation. My name is Sophia Schorr-Kon and I am an Artist who looks at the Erotic feminine and the desire body through a surreal lens.

I spent the first month of Lockdown at my Mother’s deep in the bosom of the wild Dartmoor hills, tucked up with the Matriarch of my family and the feeling of safety that coming ‘home’ delivers. After the initial relief to arrive left me I realised I was cut off from my independence professionally, financially and socially and the sensation of forced stasis was like a stone cold submission to the faceless domination of the natural world. Along with the frustration brought about by the swift shift in reality, I felt a feeling of infantilization through my location of lockdown and the wider predicament. This, mixed with the isolation brought about by lockdown and the yearning for tactile touch and sensuality meant energising my body with erotic energy was the medicine I turned to in the face of the destruction of a way of being that was crumbling. Cultivating a relationship with my sensual self while in this unique moment unfolded was essential to remedy the regression and frustration I felt. As Esther Perel states “The erotic is the antidote to death” she could not have been more right. I could either hold on to what was, or let go, trust and collaborate with the unknown and my erotic energy; creating in the moment something new each day, that would build a bridge between the here and now and a new future. My inspiration drew from Matisse and Frida Kahlo, who embraced their impediments and chose ways within their disabled states to create regardless. A privileged child of the 1980’s I have grown up and lived in relatively peaceful times, this decisive moment aligned me with a creative urgency that I had never felt before. I now understood the deeper meaning of art and the potency of creative alchemy in a way I could not have before. I surrendered to my surroundings, made peace with the present and Apocalypse Erotica was born.



The days felt like time itself was bending, and I wanted to lean into this surreal sensation and work with it, rather than against it. The spacious unknowing allowed me to reframe how I created using only what was around me. Leafing through pages of magazines, my mother is a lifetime collector, (note the perfection) and letting my imagination run wild was where I started. Within this practice I found the usual freedom of travel denied to me in the outside world. Colour, vibrancy, feeling and form lead my exploration of cutting and creating, I was magnetised to things that visually brought me pleasure and a feeling of sensuality and liberation. I chose to cut through static images created in a different time and hand make something in the present moment that represented this shifted reality. The work started on the page and I re-photographed the collages, energising them with light refractions and shadow play. These cut outs then moved on to my body, boundaries dissolving and an erotic charge created though the thrill of being within my body in front of the lens. New ideas were cultivated and the camera fixed these into a supple new reality and allowed them to be shared swiftly into the collective digital field.



Before this project emerged I have practiced what I coined Erotic-Self Witness (some may call it a sexy selfie, but I think it holds much more power and value than that), witnessing myself in emerging states, feeling, flowing and capturing new found facets of my erotic expression began privately, as a way to safely explore and embody these familiar, yet distant ancient archetypes of my of my erotic blueprint. I began to share these images with partners, then censorship free digital communities such as Fet-Life and Killing Kittens, but through lockdown there was a calling to break out from these communities and into the mainstream, as I believe that examining the relationship we have with our eros personally and within our intimate partnerships is a huge piece of the puzzle to better relating, deeper creative contentment and also is a contributing factor of how we treat the wider world around us.



Self portraiture whether painted, drawn or photographed is a way of taking control, of witnessing and of creatively rippling out from ourselves into something we have transformed through stepping into the frame, shape shifting and pressing the shutter. This space of self portraiture allows me the control and the safety to create work about the body in a state of pleasure. I do this so others can look at states which they may have forbidden to consider in themselves, my hope is that through exposing these themes in myself I encourage others to examine and reconsider their relationship to pleasure in their bodies and beyond.



Starting the journey of listening to our desires, begins with creating a sense of safety in the body, something which can be elusive for many of us due to historical trauma, twisted self perception, financial instability or the many other modern day stresses on our nervous system. Being with our bodies lovingly (I say love in the context of fierce honesty, commitment and tenderness, not sentimental, fluffy love) is a way of tuning into the huge gamut of emotional energy, ancestral feedback and present time wants and needs that resides there. Identifying and creating pleasure is the beginning of how we can gently heal ourselves, our communities and the societies we are woven into. It all starts within us and a direct route to connecting with our desires is through pleasure, as when we are embodied in pleasure we are in full communion with reality and our feelings, sensory and emotive.



When we think of the Erotic it is direclty and traditionally linked to sexuality, but the erotic is a much larger force than just sexual and it is creation energy, as it is the energy through which we are all born, it is nature herself. Audre Lorde’s text Uses of the Erotic, is an enlightened examination of the erotic and the power it holds, if you have not already read it, I urge you to, it is so relevant right now. This text was the seed to a movement you may have heard about called Pleasure Activism, a term cited by the author of a book by the same name Adrienne Maree brown. My work comes after theirs and a whole tradition of female artists who have turned the camera on themselves as a way to find place in the world and create dialogue with the feminine experience and its place within society, such as Penny Slinger, Joanne Leonard, Gillian Wearing, Cindy Sherman and so many more. It is all a circle and a cycle, reflecting each other back to ourselves through time and tide, we really are all in this together. Every one of us has a part to play in building a new world and I have chosen to let beauty, the erotic and pleasure be my tools for change and growth.

What will yours be?

How will you ripple out?

www.sophiaschorr-kon.com @sophiaschorrkon on instagram and The Modern Erotic on Spotify.