The drawing shows a woman in a red Alexander Wang dress and blue prison socks. Next to her is a thought bubble that reads “Send Bitcoin”. The chair she’s sitting on has “Wanted” written on the back.
The woman is Anna Sorokin — the notorious fake German heiress whose high society scams were exposed in a Vanity Fair article and then turned into hit Netflix drama Inventing Anna — and the drawing is part of a group art show at a Lower East museum Side that shows their work. Kind of.
Running until the end of March, the exhibition — Free Anna Delvey, a nod to the false heiress’ preferred surname — features drawings and other artworks, mostly by 33 artists who claim to have been “inspired” by Sorokin’s story.
It also includes five of Sorokin’s own 22×30 inch pencil and acrylic drawings that she made in prison – although, as is often the case with Sorokin in the past, that’s not entirely true, as the drawings were actually reproduced on large format watercolor paper by Alfred Martinez, the show’s co-curator.
“If she wants to get someone to copy her artwork, it’s good that she has a Basquiat forger to do it,” Martinez told Insider, citing the fact that he served two years in prison in the early 2000s for he had sold Basquiat paintings he had faked.
Julia Morrison, the exhibition’s other co-curator, told the New York Times that she originally discovered Sorokin’s drawings while browsing Instagram. “Nobody’s just a villain or just a hero,” said Morrison, an artist whose own claim to shame informs NFTs featuring screenshots of messages sent to her by actor Armie Hammer about sex slavery and cannibalism.
Morrison said she identified closely with Sorokin’s story because her own mother spent time in an immigration detention center. Sorokin is arrested by Ice after serving a four-year sentence for second-degree grand larceny, theft of services, and attempted first-degree grand larceny.
The Netflix documentary, which chronicles Sorokin’s rise and fall as a con artist in New York City, apparently didn’t get Sorokin’s approval, despite reportedly making six figures for advising on the show. “This super-glam portrayal of me in the Netflix series isn’t that accurate,” she told the New York Times, adding that she wanted the Free Anna Delvey art show — which she helped coordinate and produce from her confinement cell — to gave the public an impression Look at “their side of the story,” as Martinez told Forbes.
“Art is only partly about talent and determination and even more about the artist’s ability to attract attention through personality and story. And this is where she really shines,” he said.
Anna’s reproduced sketches cost $10,000 each. She claims that 15% of the selling price of one of the drawings will be donated to a children’s charity. According to Martinez, 25% of the show’s revenue goes towards Sorokin’s legal defense.
Sorokin’s legal team is fighting her deportation. Earlier this month her lawyer filed a last-minute appeal with immigration authorities, hours before she was due to be deported to Germany, citing “serious health problems”. Sorokin was granted emergency consideration.
She has since sued ICE, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), claiming she caught Covid-19 while in custody after ICE officers allegedly denied her requests for a booster shot.