Anna Sorokin Talks About Making Art

Down a narrow hallway packed with lockers and plumes of marijuana and cigarette smoke, at A2Z Delancey, a small pop-up art gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, some 150 unmasked art goers attended an opening last Thursday night for Anna Sorokin’s first group gallery exhibition.

While others sipped beers, others sat on couches and some went outside to spray graffiti on the courtyard wall behind them. For about half an hour, a rock band played, with guests and musicians wildly bobbing their heads, hair flying, and convulsing in tandem.

For diehards of the Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” which described the fake German heiress’s meteoric rise into Manhattan society — she bilked banks, stole a private jet and skipped out on hotel bills in a ploy to turn the Anna Delvey Foundation, a members-only arts club on Park Avenue South, into a reality — the opening couldn’t have been less, well, Anna.

Of course, that’s not how Ms. Sorokin (her real name), saw the scene: “I liked that it was gritty,” Ms. Sorokin, 31, said from her cell at Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, N.Y, where she is now detained by immigration authorities after completing her four-year sentence for her eight-count conviction in 2019 for financial crimes.

“That superglam portrayal of me in the Netflix series is not that accurate,” she said.

The show, titled “Free Anna Delvey,” which closes March 27, references her long-preferred name and current detainment for overstaying her visa. It includes the works of 33 other artists inspired by Ms. Sorokin’s experience and centers on five 22-inch-by-30-inch Anna Delvey pencil and acrylic drawings, priced at $10,000. (Fifteen percent of the sale price of one of the drawings will go to a children’s charity.)

Ms. Sorokin did not draw any of the Anna Delvey artworks. Alfredo Martinez reproduced the pieces in the back of this room from drawings she made while she was incarcerated. Friends posted them to her Instagram account. (Mr. Martinez was sentenced to prison in the early 2000s for wire and mail fraud in connection with his forged drawings of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Ms. Sorokin stated that she had intended to make larger-scale drawings by herself. However, the detention center limited the size of the paper she was allowed to use, so Mr. Martinez offered his expertise. “In the art world, it’s very common to have an assistant,” he said.

The collaborative drawings in the show include a woman corresponding with someone over a correctional services messaging system stating “Send Bitcoin” and a pencil drawing depicting a woman floating out to sea on a block of ice, entitled “Anna on ICE.”

Julia Morrison, an artist who created NFTs out of messages she said the actor Armie Hammer sent her, said she first came upon Ms. Sorokin’s sketches while scrolling through Instagram. Ms. Morrison, a co-curator of the show with Mr. Martinez, said she identified closely with Ms. Sorokin’s story because her own mother served time in an immigration detention facility.

Ms. Morrison, who introduced Mr. Martinez to Ms. Sorokin’s work, said most people had over-simplified her backstory: “No one is just a villain, or just a hero.”

Initially, Mr. Martinez didn’t know how to get in touch with Ms. Sorokin, who was then enjoying a media tour during her six-week stint of freedom between the end of her criminal sentence and her arrest by ICE officials. So, he said, he pitched an article to Page Six of The New York Post, that appeared with the headline: “Anna Sorokin’s artwork could get its own exhibition” and waited for her to call. And she did.

Both said that she was detained by ICE within days of their call, which halted their planning process. They also added that they reconnected via the texting app at the correctional institution and resumed planning earlier this season.

Ms. Sorokin called Mr. Martinez the night before the opening to check in. He placed the call on speakerphone and held it up high as people tried to congratulate him on the opening.

“Free Anna Delvey!” people chanted before the call ended.

Todd Spodek (her trial lawyer) was among those present. He did not leave with any of her drawings.

“I already have a few select pieces from the one-woman private art show that happened at 111 Centre Street,” he quipped, referencing the location of her trial where she often sketched. But, he said, he was glad to see people’s interest in her work.

“Anna Delvey affects women now the way ‘Fight Club’ affected men in the ’90s,” Mr. Martinez said of Ms. Sorokin’s appeal. “All the women who were in the show said yes before I finished my sentence.”

More than half the artists in this show are women. Rina Oh’s pastel on paper titled “Her Royal Highness Princess Annoushka (Anna Delvey) Louise of Savoy” mimicked a portrait of Marie Antoinette, casting Ms. Sorokin as a member of the Russian monarchy.

“I’m making fun of the royals,” Ms. Oh said. “Because she took advantage of those kinds of people and they usually take advantage of us.”

Ms. Morrison used a sledgehammer for the show to create a commode that was filled with shredded paper inspired by former President Donald J. Trump. (She is currently in the process to mint several NFTs of images from the smashing.

Martinez stated that he hoped the exhibit would show immigration authorities Ms. Sorokin would offer more if she could get out of behind bars.

Chris Martine, an art dealer who has represented Ms. Sorokin for several months, said he is now planning a second exhibit — her first solo show — opening with 20 drawings at “an upscale Manhattan location,” as early as April, with the hope of later taking it to Los Angeles, Miami, London and Paris, among other large cities. He expected Ms. Sorokin would complete “the last few pieces” by next week.

It can be difficult to put on a show while being detained. Ms. Sorokin confirmed she received 9”x 12” watercolor paper and 12 non-toxic colored pencils but her set of watercolors — mistaken for makeup — did not pass through the metal detector. She isn’t allowed to use the pencil sharpener, so asks a correctional officer to sharpen her pencils. She’s also working without erasers: “So def can’t afford to make any mistakes,” Ms. Sorokin texted.

Mr. Martine stated that he had sent her photos he requested to inspire her, including: Balthazar Restaurant and Sant Ambroeus, SoHo; La Mamounia which was a luxurious Marrakesh hotel; Passages Malibu where she was arrested by law enforcement officials in 2017; and the New York courthouse steps.

Ms. Sorokin was required to barter with a group of detainees in order to coordinate the show. Her facility-issued tablet battery died quickly so she had to trade access to her devices for vending machine snacks. She purchases these snacks through her commissary account. “I’m contributing to the local economy,” Ms. Sorokin said.

But Mr. Martine said the hassle has been worth it: “We want the world to get a glimpse of Anna’s legitimate entrance into the fine art world.”

He added, “But beyond that, art is only partly about talent and determination and even more so about the artist’s ability to demand attention through their personality and story. And this is where she really shines.”

Ms. Sorokin was in her cell and contemplated how far her art career had progressed, building on her failed foundation attempt and the series events that kept her behind bars most of the last four years.

“It’s ironic,” she said. “How after having failed so publicly while trying to build A.D.F. a couple of years ago, people are way more interested in hearing my voice now than they were back in 2017.”