About Jelena Vermilion
Self-portrait, taken in 2023.
Letter of congratulations from the LAO for Jelena Vermilion's nomination for the YWCA 2024 Women of Distinction Award.
Jelena Vermilion is a transgender artist, model, personal support worker, and full-service sex worker. She is also the founder and Executive Director of Sex Workers Action Program (SWAP) Hamilton. SWAP is a direct action advocacy group dedicated to pushing for legal and political change, raising awareness of issues faced by sex workers, destigmatizing sex work, and directly supporting sex workers. For her leadership of SWAP, Vermilion was awarded the YWCA Hamilton’s 2024 Women of Distinction award.
Growing from and parallel to SWAP’s operations, the Jelena Vermilion Collection—colloquially known as SWAP’s Sex Worker Media Library Archive—was motivated by Vermilion’s dedication to her community. It is meant to honor, protect, and make accessible media centering sex workers’ experiences and history.
SWAP’s partnership with the Hamilton Public Library signifies another important tool of destigmatization: building connections with local institutions. SWAP’s other partnerships include McMaster University’s Office of Community Engagement, the YWCA, and the Greater Hamilton Health Network. Vermilion routinely engages with local news networks to promote SWAP and educate the public about the sex worker rights movement—ultimately, affirming that sex workers are and have always been a part of our communities.
Truth Resurrects, 2023 (Rendition of Jean-Léon Gérôme's 1895 painting Mendacibus et histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma Veritas {The nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors})
Watercolour on watercolour paper
Vermilion transforms the moment of death in Gérôme’s original painting into a resurrection. The bright colours contrast with the original’s desaturated tones, signifying the transformative power of the truth. This departure unfreezes the moment of Truth’s death; now, this juncture is also her resurrection. Drink from the well of truth and be reborn.
Vermilion uses her activism as a tool to inform her artistic process. She is a self-taught mixed-media artist, principally working with the techniques of painting and collage.
She develops her creations intuitively, bringing ideas to life over an extended period of time with sensory selection of visual and textural elements. Her intuition in artmaking is mediated by intentionality; each decision of placement, colour, collage, and composition is made with consideration for symbolism and cultural sense-making. In Truth Resurrects, for instance, Vermilion intentionally selected colours on either end of the spectrum of visible light to accent the glow of the mirror and Truth’s hair, suggesting that one's revival can come at a surprise. Meanwhile, the "My tits feed my family" slogan featured in We Are Ungovernable produces a triple entendre of labour, domestic responsibility, and nourishment.
Her art draws from many wells; blending aesthetic senses, activist themes and slogans, and her relationship with herself and her community. Her relationship with friend, mentor, and foundational sex work activist Carol Leigh (1951-2022) has been of particular influence on the thematic and aesthetic development of Vermilion's work.
In April of 2025, Vermilion's artworks were exhibited in public for the first time, with three on display at a group exhibition at the Gallery Erato in Seattle, Washington.
The Power of “No” Against Manufactured Consent, 2025
Mixed media collage on construction paper
Millicent Echoes, 2024
Mixed media collage on construction paper
I Want To Belong, 2023
Paint pen and paint on watercolour paper
Stop The War, 2023
Mixed media collage with paint, card stock, and thread-embroidery on multimedia paper
The spirit of Carol Leigh is here represented as a butterfly—a symbol of transformation, rebirth, and the soul’s journey beyond death. She carries the brilliance she embodied in life, radiating the kindness, generosity, and unwavering advocacy that defined her. The composition incorporates cut-outs from the memorial cards distributed at her celebration of life, grounding the piece in both personal and collective remembrance. Vivid colors reflect the depth of her impact as a friend, mentor, and fierce champion for sex workers’ rights. Like a phoenix, she rose again and again, inspiring Vermilion to continue the fight for dignity with that same fire.
We Are Ungovernable, 2023
Mixed media collage on glitter stock card
This work honors the resilience, wisdom, and unwavering tenacity of sex workers. At its center, the “heart of gold” reclaims the well-worn adage, asserting both strength and compassion in the face of stigma. The figure balances on one leg, highlighting the instability imposed by economic precarity. Inscribed across her body, the phrase “my tits feed my family” is a raw assertion of labour and necessity that mirrors the survival and care reflected in the breastfeeding imagery. Purple hues reference the military Purple Heart, while the red lantern in the lower right evokes the enduring symbol of the red-light district.
Big Brother, 2025
Mixed media collage on paper
Surveillance is rarely neutral; rather, it is a force that shapes reality, determining who is watched, who is suspect, and who is deemed expendable. Drawing upon George Orwell’s 1984 and the enduring “Do you know where your children are?” PSA, this work critically examines the mechanisms of surveillance, policing, and state violence. It interrogates the ways in which notions of safety are constructed, revealing how technological advancements, positioned as protective measures, can instead be wielded as tools of control. By juxtaposing historical anxieties with speculative futures, Vermilion explores the manufactured narratives of criminality and deviance that emerge under the gaze of an absolute authority.
The Scarlet Stigma, 2025
Mixed media collage on construction paper
This piece examines the enduring harm inflicted by stigma, drawing upon The Scarlet Letter as a symbol of societal condemnation. The presence of the noose underscores how the unjust "whore stigma" functions as a form of social and psychological execution, while the figures, suspended in time, evoke a perpetual state of scrutiny and condemnation. Vermilion challenges the viewer to confront the mechanisms of shame and control that have historically been wielded against sex workers and marginalized individuals, questioning why such stigma continues to hold power and what we can do to dismantle it.
Artist statements written by Jelena Vermilion and edited by Cat Solomon.