She Pays herself

Creative Direction

Jan 23

When the body and the words share wages.

She Pays Herself is a visual study in autonomy which uses the strip club as a metaphor for creative labor- a space where performance, currency, and gaze intersect. Within the Renaissance Rap universe, the system is interrupted; In the world of the pretty penman, rules are reversed.

The body is present, but it is not for sale.

The gaze is acknowledged, but it is not rewarded.

The audience is implied, but it is not necessary.

The money still comes.

This piece reframes the strip as a site of authorship rather than extraction. It frames it as a space where performance, poetry, and survival overlap. The poet is both the performer and the beneficiary. There are no tips, no intermediaries, no validation required. Only the exchange between effort, survival, and self-determined value.

The shell is present, but the soul is the product.

Here, the transaction is internal.

The artist performs,

the artist pays herself,

and the value of the work is determined in real time.

What remains is work without permission and creation without debt.