The socialite scammer says her prison sketches mark the beginning of an attempt to reclaim her story
Over the course of her years-long imprisonment, fake German heiress Anna Delvey (otherwise known as Anna Sorokin) has shared glimpses at the art she’s been working on to while away her time, posting them for her million Instagram followers. In one black-and-white sketch, she makes business deals from a prison phone, dressed in labelled Fenty loungewear. In another she requests bitcoin over the inmate payment platform JPay, sitting in a chair marked “Wanted”, holding Agent Provocateur handcuffs.
Are they particularly great sketches? No comment. But they do represent an iconic moment in the world of deluded investors, bumbling tech bros, and expensive Moroccan hotels that Delvey briefly moved in, before she was charged with fraud, theft, and grand larceny in 2017. So it’s unsurprising (if a bit ironic) that the Instagram posts have people lining up to throw their money at the con artist-turned-actual artist, even after all her previous controversies.
In even less surprising news, Delvey seems ready to cash in on the enthusiasm. After launching her fine art career – alongside convicted Basquiat forger Alfredo Martinez, of course – earlier this year, the scammer has announced her first solo exhibition, launching on Thursday (May 19), at NYC’s Public Hotel.
Titled “Allegedly”, the show will apparently consist of 20 new works from Delvey’s time in an ICE detention centre in upstate New York, where she was detained in early 2021 and continues to wait on the verdict of an appeal against her deportation back to Germany.
“I wanted to capture some of the moments of the past years, both never-seen-before and iconic, using the limited tools I have at my disposal,” she tells Page Six in a statement on the art show. “Some of the pieces are straightforward, others are more abstract and will be unique in meaning and appearance to the observer.”
“You’ve heard so many voices already,” she adds. “But this is the beginning of me telling my story, my narrative, from my perspective.”
Of course, Delvey sold the rights to her story for Netflix’s Inventing Anna, fetching a reported $320,000 to repay many of her debts. Similarly, her own telling of the tale won’t come cheap. According to Chris Martine, a representative of Founders Art Club who will handle art sales for Delvey, the total value of the pieces in the show is $500,000. Instead of selling individual artworks, however, Delvey and Martine are set to sell a 48 per cent ownership of the entire collection. Sound sketchy? What did you expect?