In March and April 2026, artist and sex worker Muza de la Luz (they/them) gathered a group of sex workers in Oslo for a workshop and performance project called Siren Stories. Through workshops facilitated by Muza, participants developed artistic works rooted in their own experiences. The results were presented over four evenings at Oslo Nye Theatre in the early spring.

The project grew out of Muza’s artistic research at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, where they explored the relationship between performance, ritual, embodiment and sex work. As Muza explained to me, Siren Stories builds on an international tradition of sex worker-led artistic and political organizing. It also emerged from the experience of arriving in Norway and encountering how difficult it could be for sex workers to gather collectively under the Nordic Model.

Central to Siren Stories is the idea that sex workers are not simply subjects of political debate, but artists, storytellers and producers of knowledge. Muza emphasized that sex workers already carry complex forms of embodied and performative knowledge even if society rarely recognizes these skills as artistic labour.

What is a siren?

So, I wanted a name for the show that I could put on social media without it getting flagged or removed. It couldn’t be anything too explicit. I landed on Siren Stories. The mythological siren is a figure whose voice is so powerful that it lures sailors toward danger. That image has been associated with sex workers for thousands of years: the seductive woman, the dangerous woman, the woman whose sexuality supposedly threatens social order.

But there’s also the siren as a warning signal. An alarm. That meaning is important to me because I think sex workers often function as a kind of warning system in our societies. Because of the intersections of class, migration, race, disability, gender, poverty – all these things – sex workers are often among the first people to feel the effects of political violence, economic collapse or social control. I often think about the expression “the canary in the coal mine.” When the bird dies it warns the miners that something is wrong with the air. I think sex workers often become those canaries in our societies.

Can you introduce yourself and your artistic practice?

My artistic name is Muza de a Luz, which means “the muse of light” in Spanish. I chose it when I first started doing burlesque, before I started working as a stripper. I chose a Spanish name partly because of my Latino heritage and partly because I wanted something that felt very intentional.

Performance has always been part of my life. Both of my parents are performing artists, so I grew up surrounded by theatre, concerts, rehearsals and backstage environments.

My background is extremely mixed. My foundation in dance is classical ballet, modern, jazz, musical theatre and dance from the African diaspora. I also did synchronized swimming learned costume design, makeup and performance aesthetics through all these different worlds, and so my artistic practice has always been very physical and interdisciplinary.

For many years I tried to keep my artistic work, and my sex work separate. But they kept bleeding into each other. The further I went into both worlds, the more I realized that they were already informing each other. At some point, I just thought okay, this is it. This is the work that I am going to be doing.

So, at the time when I applied for the Norwegian theatre academy, I was realizing that I wanted to openly create work where sex work and artistic practice could merge. The academy’s framework of ‘artistic practice as research’ became important for me. It allowed things like movement, journaling, ritual, conversations and embodiment to count as research and knowledge production in and of itself. Before I accepted my place there, I remember asking them directly: ‘Will you support me if people become uncomfortable with sex work as a subject?’ And they said yes. So, I said, ‘okay let’s go’.

What’s up with the colour green and your visual identity?

I dyed my hair green during the pandemic after having blonde hair for years.

At first it was just aesthetic experimentation. But once I did it, something clicked immediately. I’ve always been deeply connected to nature, and I got introduced to the idea of eco-sexuality in 2015 with Annie Sprinkle, which for me was like a light bulb moment. To see an elder who has been a sex worker for a long time and then moved into performance art. She was able to infuse her creative self with all her past experience without the shame and the stigma. And so, the green colour slowly became symbolic. I try to keep my hair the colour of spring leaves – that bright green you know, when things begin growing again.

But there’s also a practical side to it that stems from strip club work. A lot of clubs use UV lighting and blacklights, and I became fascinated with fluorescence. I wanted to glow under the lights instead of disappearing into darkness. Now people associate the colour with me.

Where did the idea for Siren Stories come from?

I feel like the project has existed in fragments for a very long time. Over the years I’ve been part of many workshops and artistic incubator processes where artists gather, experiment and create work collectively, and one of the most important experiences for me was working with Nadia Granados in Colombia. She created a workshop process called cabaret político that combined performance and politics in this explosive and fearless way. Later she also did workshops with trans sex workers in Bogotá, and it became one of the most incredible performances I’ve ever seen in my life. Not only because of the quality of the work itself, but because of the energy in the room. The power of seeing people create from their own experiences without shame. That stayed with me.

So eventually I began thinking I want to create something like this too. I want to offer this kind of space to people around me. When I arrived in Norway, though, I found it very difficult to connect with sex workers. It took a long time to build trust and find community, and I think part of that is because of the Nordic Model. Even though Norway officially says that selling sex is legal, the reality is much more complicated. The criminalization of clients affects everything. It affects where people work, how people gather, whether people trust each other, whether people feel safe enough to organize publicly. So, Siren Stories also became an attempt to create community.

Why is it important for you to emphasize that these kinds of projects exist internationally?

Because there’s this idea, especially in Scandinavia sometimes, that the sex worker rights movements are somehow this Western liberal thing that only belongs to privileged white women in Europe or the United States. And that’s simply not true. There are sex worker movements all over the world. There have been for decades. In India, Thailand, across Africa, in Latin America, in New Zealand – everywhere.

People have always organized around labour, safety, survival and dignity. That history matters because sex workers constantly get represented as passive victims with no political agency of their own. But sex workers have always resisted. They’ve always created culture. They’ve always created systems of survival and solidarity. And I wanted Siren Stories to continue that lineage.

Can you tell me a bit about the workshops?

We met twice a week for a little over a month. Part of each session involved watching work by sex worker artists from around the world: performances, storytelling projects, films, political cabaret pieces. Then we would discuss them together. After that I would offer some prompts to write on, a somatic movement practice and improvisation. Slowly people started developing their own material.

But honestly, I had complete faith in everybody from the beginning because sex work already requires so many performative skills. Whether somebody works in stripping, camming, full-service work, domination, online content or something else entirely — sex workers are constantly working with storytelling, atmosphere, embodiment, emotional reading, improvisation and performance.

As a sex worker you learn how to read people’s energy very quickly. You learn how to build a character. You learn how to create intimacy, tension, humour, seduction or comfort depending on the situation. A lot of sex workers are already filming themselves, editing videos, designing costumes, creating visual identities, doing makeup, lighting, sound and marketing. So, they are already making art in many ways, even if society refuses to recognize it as such. The workshops weren’t really about ‘teaching’ creativity. They were more about creating a container where people felt safe enough to experiment and express themselves.

Some people had extensive performance backgrounds. Others had never done anything like this before. And the support people gave each other was incredible. I loved that there was a huge variety of backgrounds and experiences in the room. It was beautiful watching people with more experience give generous feedback and encouragement to those who had never done anything like this before.

Every time I left a workshop session my heart felt full.

How did you work with safety and trust, considering how stigmatized sex work is?

Trust takes time. Especially in Norway, where I think the Nordic Model has created a lot of fear and isolation around gathering collectively as sex workers. This kind of work cannot happen overnight. You have to build consistency and trust over time. So, part of the work was simply showing up again and again and creating a space where people could slowly feel things out without pressure.

I organized the workshops very intentionally around flexibility. I would arrive early before each session and stay afterwards too, so people had time to settle in, talk privately, decompress or just exist together socially. And I made it very clear from the beginning that people were allowed to step back at any moment. If someone suddenly felt uncomfortable, overwhelmed or unsafe, they could leave. Even right before walking on stage. I kept telling participants: if something inside you says no, you are allowed to say no. I don't care if you're about to walk on stage and suddenly feel ‘I cannot’, or if you spot somebody in the audience who isn't a safe person. Let me know immediately and we will figure it out.

I noticed that many of the performers talked about disability and neurodivergence. Do you have any thoughts about how this connects to sex work?

Personally, I don’t have a formal diagnosis, but over the years I’ve started recognizing a lot of things in myself related to autism, ADHD, masking, chronic pain and sensory overwhelm.

And in my experience, there’s a huge overlap between neurodivergent people and sex workers. Partly I think this is because sex work can offer a type of flexibility and autonomy that many conventional jobs simply don’t allow. A lot of neurodivergent people struggle inside rigid labour structures with fixed schedules, constant social performance, overstimulation and lack of control over your own energy and time. Sex work can sometimes allow people to regulate themselves differently.

There were days where I would literally get ready to go to work, pick up my bag, and then suddenly something inside me would say: no, not today. And because of the kind of sex work I was doing, I could allow myself to listen to that feeling.

You begin the performances with calling in yours and the audiences’ ancestors, the ancestors of the land as well the generations of sex workers that came before us. I remember that you called specifically on all the ‘old hookers and hustlers, the fallen women and survivors’. What does that mean to you?

For me, performance in itself is a ritual. There are many ways to make a ritual, whether you are alone or if you're doing it as a group. For me, one of the ways I conceptualize it, is as a marked moment of acknowledgement and intention of energy. This is also part of my spiritual and creative practice.

I've worked with a lot of teachers and mentors, who incorporates this in their practice. Sometimes it's not a public acknowledgement, but I wanted to make it very clear in this case. I opened every show with that because the intention of this project is to shift public opinion through storytelling, it’s kind of a way of getting everybody on board.

In relation to that, what do you want audiences to walk away with after the performances?

I wanted people to leave with something that haunts them a little. Not just intellectually, but emotionally. And I want people to have a little bit more compassion and to understand that sex workers are human beings, not abstract stereotypes. And that there are sex workers everywhere. In every community. In every social class. People just don’t realize it.

I wanted them to keep thinking about the stories afterward. To notice how stigma operates in everyday life. To notice when someone makes a cruel joke or repeats harmful assumptions. I want people to start questioning the systems that produce shame and isolation in the first place.

And honestly, with economic crises and wars escalating globally, more people will continue turning to sex work. That has always happened historically. So, these conversations are not going away, they are becoming more urgent.

Are you planning to continue the work with Siren Stories?

Absolutely. I’m already discussing future workshop rounds and looking into collaborations, residencies and PhD possibilities in Norway and other countries. I want the project to keep growing and I would love to eventually contribute to connecting sex workers across borders – creating exchanges between communities in different countries, sharing methods, creating performances together.

At the same time, I know this kind of work has to move slowly, especially when it comes to involving people in more precarious situations – migrant workers, undocumented workers, street-based workers. The risks around visibility are much higher for some sex workers than others. But yes. I’m definitely going to continue this work.

This is only the beginning.

The project received funding from Fritt Ord and Oslo Kommune