TEMPTRESS 6 MONEY ISSUE

"Money never shows up clean. It comes with desire, shame, hunger, contracts, fantasies, and a silence that says more than any bank statement. TEMPTRESS — the independent art platform and print magazine founded by Ukrainian artist Julie Poly — dedicates its sixth issue to following money into the places where it gets uncomfortable: bedrooms and strip clubs, legal brothels and dating apps, oligarch summits and bedroom altars, rooftops in Rio and night streets in Warsaw. The Money Issue arrives at a moment when the relationship between bodies and capital has become the central tension across contemporary culture — from the platformisation of sex work to the aestheticisation of financial dependence on TikTok, from the art market's entanglement with speculative wealth to the ongoing precarity of creative labour. TEMPTRESS approaches this territory not through theory alone, but through lived experience, sensory detail, and the kind of honesty that no institution typically budgets for — in voices that range from academic research to stripper confessionals, from queer fashion editorials to sex magic rituals on a bedroom floor. For five issues, we talked about the body, desire, and pleasure. Now we're asking — how much did that cost? And who got the bill? says Julie Poly Six Covers For the first time, TEMPTRESS comes in six covers — because one face could never hold all this currency. Amanda Lepore — who spent decades building herself into New York nightlife's most iconic face, proving that glamour is not given, it's self-made. Arvida Byström, who's spent a decade interrogating what happens to femininity when it lives online — from censored selfies to AI nudes of herself. Kazhanna — Ukraine's new voice, appearing in this issue as Cinderella. The kind that knows her price and won't let anyone else set it. Softies by John Yonatan Jacoby — pretty boys in cake and couture, asking why the thing everyone wants in the dark gets punished in daylight. Counterfuture — anonymous artist. Real police footage from raids on Ukrainian brothels, taken from open sources. And Fetisch Barbie, who turned body modification into confrontation and walks into every room like a price you can't afford to pay. Inside The issue features an exclusive interview with Santiago Sierra, conducted by Dasha Anosova, alongside a conversation with filmmaker Erika Lust — plus essays, photo series, confessions, and experiments from 25+ contributors spanning Kyiv, Berlin, London, São Paulo, New York, Vienna, Warsaw, and beyond. This issue includes a special insert for the babes: scented stickers created in collaboration with JOUISSANCE perfumes and TEMPTRESS. Extending beyond the page, the insert connects olfactory experience to one of the essays in the issue, where scent becomes an entry point into memory and desire."