While Netflix’s Inventing Anna star, Anna Sorokin – who posed as the fake German heiress and adopted the alias of Anna Delvey – has not realised her dream of having an ambitious arts centre named after her, she seems to have taken a plunge into her art career. She has sought help from a fellow con artist Alfredo Martinez to do the same.
In 2002, Martinez was arrested and imprisoned for selling forged artworks of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
As the saying goes, birds of the same feather flock together, and Martinez seems to have found a connection with Sorokin. His interest in Sorokin was fuelled by his knowledge of her interest in art and how she was still creating art from prison. Touched, he said, “It got me right in the feels.”
Together, they decided to host a pop-up art show at 176 Delancey Street on the Lower East Side on March 17th, 2022 and had a host of prison art made by Sorokin herself.
Titled Free Anna Delvey, the exhibition featured five of her drawings that include the infamous Send Bitcoin painting made in New York correctional facilities. In the illustration, Sorokin as Delvey, in red, lazily holds a pair of handcuffs as she accesses JPay and thinks about bitcoins. The picture has been coloured and enlarged by Martinez. He called himself Sorokin’s “assistant”.
The main attraction of the show, Sorokin, was unfortunately not present at the pop-up as she is currently in the custody of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for overstaying her visa.
Anna Delvey became a sensation after Jessica Pressler’s scathing New York Magazine article, titled “How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party people”, revealed how she managed to con the affluent New York socialite of millions of dollars.
Charged with larceny, the real-life Sorokin was imprisoned for some time. The immensely talented Julia Garner portrayed her in the series. Anna Chlumsky took over the role of Vivian Kent, a journalist closely associated with investigating the case and bringing Anna’s story to the fore.
Take a look at the ambitious and audacious exhibition snippets below: