If you’ve ever walked into a high-end gallery and felt like you were missing the joke, you aren't alone. Art is weird. But in the mid-1970s, Cosey Fanni Tutti took "weird" to a level that almost broke the British legal system. We’re talking about the "Prostitution" exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in 1976. This wasn't just some edgy painting or a provocative sculpture. It involved Cosey Fanni Tutti pornography—actual magazine spreads and films she appeared in—recontextualized as high art.
People lost their minds.
Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn famously labeled the group behind it, COUM Transmissions, as "the wreckers of civilization." That’s a heavy title for a group of artists from Hull. But Cosey wasn't just trying to shock people for the sake of a headline. She was conducting a grueling, years-long experiment on her own body and the patriarchal gaze of the adult industry. She wanted to know if she could remain an artist while being a commodity.
The ICA Scandal and the "Wreckers of Civilization"
The 1976 show is the stuff of legend. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine the scale of the outrage today. COUM Transmissions, featuring Cosey and Genesis P-Orridge, filled the ICA with used tampons, grainy photos, and the very magazines Cosey had modeled for. The Cosey Fanni Tutti pornography wasn't hidden; it was the centerpiece.
By the time the show opened, Cosey had been working in the sex industry for a while. She worked as a model for "top shelf" magazines and performed in strip clubs. For her, this wasn't a "day job" to pay for paint brushes. It was the work. She was infiltrating a space that usually consumed women and trying to see if she could consume it back.
The media frenzy was immediate. The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail went into a full-blown moral panic. They couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that a woman would voluntarily enter the world of softcore and hardcore pornography and then claim it was "art." It challenged the binary of victim vs. empowered woman. Cosey didn't fit into the boxes they had ready for her.
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Infiltrating the Industry: The Process
Cosey’s approach was methodical. She didn't just walk into a studio and say, "I’m an artist." She went in as a working girl. She took on the personas required by the photographers. She wore the wigs. She struck the poses. In her autobiography, Art Sex Music, she describes the experience with a clinical, almost detached clarity.
She noted how the photographers treated her. She watched the way the lighting was rigged to create a specific fantasy. By participating in Cosey Fanni Tutti pornography, she was gathering data.
"I was a model, but I was also the observer of the model," she essentially argued.
This creates a weird tension. Usually, in pornography, the power lies with the person behind the camera or the person buying the magazine. Cosey flipped that. By claiming the images as her own "prostitution" art pieces, she took the power back. It made the viewers of the magazines unintentional participants in an art performance. That’s kinda brilliant, and honestly, a bit terrifying for the people who just wanted a magazine for "personal use."
Transgressing the Boundaries of Industrial Music
You can't talk about Cosey’s visual work without mentioning Throbbing Gristle. After COUM Transmissions evolved, they became the pioneers of Industrial music. The sound was abrasive. It was mechanical. It felt like a factory floor collapsing into a nightmare.
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The visuals they used for their albums and live shows often incorporated elements of Cosey Fanni Tutti pornography. They wanted to force the audience to confront the "unacceptable." While other bands were singing about love or rebellion, Throbbing Gristle was showing you the grimy underbelly of 20th-century life.
It wasn't just about sex. It was about control. They explored themes of fascism, serial killers, and clinical psychology. Cosey’s presence was the humanizing (or sometimes dehumanizing) element in this sonic assault. She proved that the body itself could be an instrument—not just through her cornet playing, but through her physical image.
Why It Still Matters Today
We live in the age of OnlyFans and "Instagram face." The line between "personal branding" and "pornography" has never been blurrier. In many ways, Cosey was forty years ahead of her time. She was exploring the commodification of the self before the internet made it a global pastime.
Here is what most people get wrong: they think she was a victim of the "Industrial" scene or a victim of the porn industry. If you read her accounts, it’s the opposite. She was often the most grounded person in the room. While others were spiraling into ego trips, she was documenting the reality of the situation.
- She challenged the male-dominated art world.
- She refused to be ashamed of her body or her choices.
- She showed that "low culture" could be "high art" if the intent was there.
The Cosey Fanni Tutti pornography wasn't a lapse in judgment. It was a calculated strike against a society that wanted women to be either saints or sinners, with nothing in between.
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The Feminist Critique: A Complicated Relationship
Not everyone in the feminist movement loved what Cosey was doing. In the 70s and 80s, anti-pornography feminism was a massive force. Many activists saw her work as nothing more than catering to the "male gaze." They felt she was validating an industry that oppressed women.
Cosey’s response was essentially that her lived experience was more valid than their theory. She felt empowered by her ability to move through those spaces. She saw the "models" as workers with their own agency. This debate hasn't gone away. It’s just moved to different platforms.
Actionable Insights: Understanding Transgressive Art
If you are looking to understand the legacy of Cosey Fanni Tutti or looking to explore transgressive art yourself, keep these points in mind:
- Context is everything. An image in a magazine is just an image. That same image in a gallery with a manifesto behind it becomes a critique of the magazine itself. This is the "Duchamp" effect, but applied to the human body.
- Agency matters. The difference between exploitation and art often lies in who is holding the metaphorical (or literal) remote control. Cosey owned her narrative, even when she didn't own the copyright to the photos.
- Expect discomfort. True transgressive art isn't supposed to be "nice" or "pretty." It’s supposed to make you question why you feel uncomfortable in the first place.
- Read the primary sources. Don't just take a critic's word for it. Read Cosey’s own book. Listen to the early Throbbing Gristle records. Look at the "Prostitution" catalog. The nuances are in the details, not the headlines.
Cosey Fanni Tutti didn't just "do porn." She used the industry as a laboratory to dissect how society views women, sex, and labor. Her work remains a foundational pillar for anyone interested in performance art, feminism, or the history of counter-culture. She didn't wreck civilization; she just pointed out that the walls were already crumbling.
To truly grasp the impact of this work, research the 1976 Prostitution exhibition archives and compare the media's reaction then to how we discuss "content creators" today. The parallels are staggering. You'll find that the "scandal" was less about the images themselves and more about a woman having the audacity to say she was in control of them. This remains one of the most significant shifts in 20th-century performance art history.