Lady Sheba

Host Huck Reyes (artist, writer, organizer with BIPOC Sex Worker Writing Space) interviews Atlanta dominatrix and artist Lady Sheba on Tales From the Trade (YAS Network). Sheba discusses identifying as a sex worker, her commitment to art accessibility, and curating “Odyssey of Kink,” a donation-based photographic/archival exhibition drawn from her fellowship with the Carter Johnson Leather Library and Collection, a queer kink/fetish archive founded by Vi “Mama Vi” Johnson and her wife Jill Carter, the first Black International Ms. Leather. They explore why preserving queer and kink history matters amid fascism and censorship, including Magnus Hirschfeld’s work destroyed by Nazis, and Sheba’s “coming out” through the exhibition. The conversation also covers Black representation in BDSM/leather, race and power dynamics, and challenges of sex worker rights organizing and identity in the U.S. South. Sheba plans to tour the show, starting at Portland’s Kink Fest.

0:00 Welcome to the Show

00:28 Meet Huck and Sheba

02:01 Sex Work Identity

03:13 Odyssey of Kink Begins

04:22 Inside the Leather Library

07:37 Art for Everyone

12:40 Atlanta Kink Scene

14:22 Why Preserve History

17:55 Coming Out Through Art

20:16 Black Kink Lineage

21:31 Odyssey Tour Plans

22:34 Academia and Sex Work

23:35 Kink Beyond Colonialism

26:44 Consent and Reclaiming

28:57 Race and Desire

30:58 Organizing in the South

37:38 Queer History and Archives

39:12 Fascism and Book Burning

40:59 Building the Exhibition

44:44 Taking It on Tour

46:52 Closing Credits

Links
Lady Sheba IG
BIPOC SWWS IG
YAS Work Network