Forbidden Fruit: Tom of Finland and Pornhub Partner for Show on Censorship

A Parisian gallery has been transformed into an adult-store-inspired space as part of an exhibition presented by the Tom of Finland Foundation in partnership with adult video platform, Pornhub. The show examines the role of censorship in the images we are permitted to see, and how we are allowed to see them.

Packed for Pleasure, at Galerie Regard, considers censorship not only as the removal of images, but as an influencing factor in how images are made, distributed and remembered, and ways in which artists have developed underground networks, codes and disguises to make and circulate works at risk of being suppressed.

Spanning fine art, literature, publishing, erotica and digital culture, the show features material from Physique Pictorial, the muscle magazine that first brought Tom of Finland’s work to a US audience, as well as the anonymous 1928 homoerotic text Le Livre Blanc, later illustrated by Jean Cocteau. The exhibition places these historical works, as well as pieces from Bruce Nauman and Man Ray, alongside works from contemporary artists including Drake Carr, Emma Stern and 2015 RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Violet Chachki.

Going back to an era when censored material was kept in backstreet shops or passed from person to person, part of the gallery has become a “forbidden reading room” inspired by an adult store, complete with magazine racks and vintage televisions. Another area of the show includes a “glory hole” through which moving images can be seen.

Curator Brooke Wise of the Tom of Finland Foundation said: “Censorship has never made people stop looking, making, or desiring—it has only changed the routes they take to find one another.

“I’m interested in everything that grows out of that restriction: codes, euphemisms, pseudonyms, underground networks, things passed hand to hand or arriving wrapped in an unassuming package. There’s a strange creativity born from being told ‘no’. Packed for Pleasure brings together artists across generations to look at how desire is pictured, circulated, and made visible—and how the freedom to do so has changed over time.”

Packed for Pleasure is supported by Pornhub, where representatives of the adult platform have (unsurprisingly) become key contributors to current debates over online censorship and content moderation.

Alex Kekesi, vice-president of brand and community at Aylo, the company behind Pornhub, said: “With censorship increasingly on the rise in the era of age-verification laws and social media deplatforming, archives protecting and celebrating erotic art like the Tom of Finland Foundation’s are more important than ever. 

“Porn and art, as well as the reactions they conjure, act as cultural mirrors—with this presentation… space is created for timely discussions around sex, censorship and the fight for visibility.”

Packed for Pleasure isn’t Pornhub’s first foray into arts and culture. The platform funded cult fashion brand R&M Leathers’ catwalk show in London in September, and back in 2019 collaborated with the Maccarone Gallery in Los Angeles for an exhibition called The Pleasure Principle.

In 2021, Pornhub created a series of online guided tours titled Classic Nudes, which explored artworks including Edgar Degas’ Male Nude (1856) and François Boucher’s Brunette Odalisque (1745). However, some of the institutions selected by the adult streaming site were far from thrilled by the inclusion of their masterpieces.

Packed for Pleasure (until 13 October) at Galerie Regard, Paris