Artists

Reba Maybury

Press release

Reba Maybury is a British-Pakistani artist, writer, and political dominatrix whose multidisciplinary practice challenges the intersections of feminism, sexuality, labour, and power. Operating under the alias ‘Mistress Rebecca’, Maybury uses performance, text, painting, sculpture  and installation to critique the mechanisms of patriarchy and capitalist desire, often by subverting the dynamics of traditional domination–submission relationships. Her work is grounded in radical feminist thought and engages with the commodification of female identity, exploring how erotic labour can be recontextualized as a space for political resistance. Through her distinctive fusion of personal narrative, social critique, and sexual agency, Maybury exposes the contradictions inherent in systems of control, both in private relationships and broader socio-political structures.

Maybury’s artistic output is closely tied to her writing and curatorial work, which further extend her interrogation of power, class, and gender politics. Her publications, such as BINTS!, Faster than an erection, and Dining with Humpty Dumpty, blend autofiction, satire, and polemic to destabilize normative narratives around desire and dominance. By turning the role of the dominatrix into a lens for critique, she reframes submissive male fantasies as sites of ideological exposure, often requiring her submissives to reflect on their complicity in structural oppression by anonymously producing her artworks for her under her instruction.