International Slavery Museum launches new powerful exhibition

The International Slavery Museum has partnered with Exodus Cry on their TraffickingHub campaign, which is a grassroots movement to hold the world’s largest porn site, Pornhub accountable for sex trafficking.

Earlier this year, the campaign launched a powerful and moving art competition #ARTXFREEDOM, which is the creative arm of the charity; calling for artists to join the fight for freedom, using art to pave the way for justice for every victim of sexual exploitation.

The International Slavery Museum will be exhibiting the three shortlisted artworks in what is the museum’s first in-venue exhibition on human trafficking in porn.

As a charity, Exodus Cry fights sexual exploitation and the sex industry, in a battle that cannot be won alone – but with the movement of people.

Every day, women and girls are sexually exploited, with their abuse filmed, photographed, and then uploaded online. The TraffickingHub campaign has gained significant momentum to shut down and hold PornHub accountable for enabling and profiting from the rife sexual exploitation, trafficking and abuse of adults and children on their website.

Highlighting the horrors of human trafficking, which makes an estimated $150b a year, TraffickingHub aims to hold popular pornography websites, such as Pornhub, accountable for hosting content of sex trafficking and other non-consensual content. This display at the International Slavery Museum emphasises how this form of modern slavery is still rife.

Emily Smith, Curator of Contemporary Forms of Slavery, comments:

“The museum’s partnership with the TraffickingHub campaign is vital because exploitation in pornography – which is often a taboo subject – is frequently missed in discussions around sex trafficking. It is our duty to use our platform to raise awareness to this silent plague and to encourage people to engage and learn more about this form of modern slavery.

“Highlighting a contemporary and live campaign in our venue such as #ARTXFREEDOM not only demonstrates what anti-trafficking efforts can look like today, but also provides opportunities for visitors to be part of abolitionist movements.”

Just one of the artworks, called Verified by Jordan Beck, is a photograph with the text Verifiedplastered across the girl’s mouth. It captures the story Jordan heard about Pornhub verifying an underage (15-year-old) missing girl; demonstrating the content on the website is not always authenticated or given full consent.

The thought-provoking display will highlight campaigning efforts against the criminal content being hosted on Pornhub. Capturing raw emotions and powerful human stories, the artworks give a voice to the voiceless and to the rapidly growing problem of modern slavery. It portrays how perpetrators prey on young people and turn women into objects for profit.

Helen Taylor, Director of Intervention at Exodus Cry said:

“We are honoured by this partnership between the International Slavery Museum and our #Traffickinghub campaign, which includes the digital and physical display of our #ARTXFREEDOM contest pieces. Together we will continue to campaign and raise our voices on the front-line, for survivors of sexual exploitation.”

This display at the International Slavery Museum is an opportunity to implore others to join the movement and support victims of sex trafficking. We are all advocates.