Changing Sheets
For this project, part of a seminar on prostitution and human trafficking at the Barbur Gallery, I printed the image of Eugéne Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People on high-quality satin sheets. I then tried to get a brothel in Tel-Aviv's red-light district to allow me and a female friend to change the sheets they use with the printed sheets.
After rejections at a number of bordellos, we came up with a plausible story which finally opened the door: "we need the room for 15 minutes." We paid 75 NIS (the man initially wanted 150) and were allowed in.
The room was so cramped that the photographer had to stand outside the room to take the pictures.
After we came out, the owner chided us for lying to him: "In my Naiveté," he said "I thought you wanted to take to room to have sex in. Had I known you were going to change the sheets and take pictures, I would not have let you!"
On the sheet taken from the brothel I printed Delacroix's image again and this is what was shown, along with photographs of the action, at the Coerced Choice exhibition at the Barbur gallery in 2007.