At the heart of Quartier des Spectacles, otherwise known as Montréal’s former Red Light District, the exhibition “By and For: 30 Years of Sex Worker Resistance” is shedding light on the history, struggles, and resilience of sex workers in the city. This exhibition invites visitors not to simply observe history, but to feel its weight and intimacy. Organized by Stella, l’amie de Maimie (hereafter, Stella), a community organization led by and for sex workers, the exhibition traces a movement that has spent three decades fighting for dignity, safety, and fundamental rights.
Hosted at MEM: Centre des mémoires montréalaises from October 21, 2025 to March 15, 2026, the exhibition revisits the neighbourhood where the city’s sex workers’ rights movement began and chronicles how sex-worker activism emerged in the early 1990s, taking root in the Centre-Sud amid
the AIDS crisis, police repression, and shifting feminist politics. Through archival materials, interviews, community artwork, and deeply personal objects, the exhibition examines how sex workers have historically occupied Montreal’s urban spaces, resisted criminalization, advocated for safer working conditions, and carved out spaces of solidarity in a city that often renders them invisible.
A movement built on persistence
One of the exhibition’s most powerful through-lines is the sheer longevity of Stella’s activism. As Stella’s longtime mobilization and communications coordinator Jenn Clamen notes, marking a 30-year anniversary for sex worker resistance is inherently remarkable. “It is no small feat for a sex worker rights organization to be standing, and standing strong, 30 years later,” she writes. “The sheer amount of hatred, repression, and structural violence from anti-sex work groups, police, and institutions who turn sex workers away has not changed over the centuries, but has taken different forms… Sex workers have been leading the way for everyone’s human rights for decades.”
Over her 23 years with the organization, Clamen has witnessed sex-worker activism extend far beyond outreach work: from collaborating with anti-AIDS groups on safe-sex videos to advocating for incarcerated women, many of whom had done sex work at some point in their lives. Stella’s solidarity, she emphasizes, is not exclusive; this struggle against stigma, criminalization, and policing is shared across communities.
Humanizing the everyday
One of the exhibition’s most impactful sections grapples with a long-standing dilemma: how to tell a
collective story in a culture obsessed with the individual, particularly when it comes to sex work. Curators approached sex workers directly, asking them to contribute personal belongings from both their working and private lives.
One object stands out: a Versace perfume box, first given to a transgender sex worker (kept anonymous for safety) by a client. She later used that same box to store all the money she earned; money that later paid for her first gender-reaffirming surgery. She would continue to repurpose it,
placing inside the empty bottles of estrogen she used during her transition. Therein, the box, worn and delicate, contains an entire life-story in miniature: labour, identity, and survival.
The exhibition finds its emotional depth in objects like these, which are humble and unadorned, yet
deeply cherished. They demystify sex work not through spectacle, but through the mundane. As Clamen explains, people often come wanting to know “who the sex worker is,” expecting sensationalism. Instead, visitors encounter everyday items: perfume boxes, clothing, makeup bags, handwritten notes. These items challenge assumptions while revealing the layered realities of those who do this work.
Challenging the narratives we inherit
One of the show’s clearest messages is that sex workers have always been part of Montreal’s cultural fabric. Yet, criminalization and stigma continue to shape almost every aspect of their lives such as housing, banking, parenting, border-crossing, and safety.
The exhibition insists on reframing sex workers’ rights not as exceptional demands but as basic human rights. When visitors see sex workers’ personal belongings arranged not as spectacle but as
evidence of ordinary life, the politics becomes personal, and vice-versa. It becomes easier to understand why sex worker justice cannot be siloed from broader struggles against policing, misogyny, transphobia, and systematic inequality.
What stays with you
What affected me the most in the exhibition was precisely this tension: the quiet, grounded humanity of the displays juxtaposed against the scale of the structural violence they represent. Standing before a simple perfume box or a handwritten note, one feels how much of this history has been lived in private, out of necessity, out of fear, out of self-protection. Thus, visitors are asked to sit with the discomfort of their own assumptions, reconsidering harmful narratives surrounding sex work, labour, and community resilience. Moreover, visitors also engage with Montreal’s collective memory, recognizing the inextricable ties between sex worker activism and other feminist, queer, migrant justice, and prison abolition movements in the city.
A living archive
Ultimately, “By and For” functions as a living archive built by sex workers themselves, undiluted by
institutions that have historically erased or pathologized them. It offers not only a record of past movements of resistance, but also a reminder that this resistance is ongoing.
Admission is free, and the exhibition remains open throughout the winter.