Down a slender hallway full of lockers and plumes of marijuana and cigarette smoke, at A2Z Delancey, a small pop-up artwork gallery on the Decrease East Facet of Manhattan, some 150 unmasked artwork goers attended a gap final Thursday evening for Anna Sorokin’s first group gallery exhibition.

Sipping beers, viewers sat on couches, whereas some stepped outdoors to spray graffiti on a courtyard wall behind the area. A rock band was taking part in for about half an hour, musicians and friends furiously bobbing their heads, hair flying and convulsing in tandem.

For diehards of the Netflix sequence “Inventing Anna,” which described the faux German heiress’s meteoric rise into Manhattan society — she bilked banks, stole a personal jet and skipped out on resort payments in a ploy to show the Anna Delvey Basis, a members-only arts membership on Park Avenue South, right into a actuality — the opening couldn’t have been much less, properly, Anna.

After all, that’s not how Ms. Sorokin (her actual identify), noticed the scene: “I preferred that it was gritty,” Ms. Sorokin, 31, mentioned from her cell at Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, N.Y, the place she is now detained by immigration authorities after finishing her four-year sentence for her eight-count conviction in 2019 for monetary crimes.

“That superglam portrayal of me within the Netflix sequence just isn’t that correct,” she mentioned.

The present, titled “Free Anna Delvey,” which closes March 27, references her long-preferred identify and present detainment for overstaying her visa. It contains the works of 33 different artists impressed by Ms. Sorokin’s expertise and facilities on 5 22-inch-by-30-inch Anna Delvey pencil and acrylic drawings, priced at $10,000. (Fifteen p.c of the sale value of one of many drawings will go to a kids’s charity.)

However not one of the Anna Delvey artworks have been drawn by Ms. Sorokin. These items, displayed towards the again of the room, have been reproduced by Alfredo Martinez from drawings she made whereas incarcerated and had mates put up to her Instagram account. (Mr. Martinez served jail time within the early 2000s for mail and wire fraud associated to his cast drawings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the graffiti artist.)

Ms. Sorokin mentioned she had deliberate to make the larger-scale drawings herself, however the detention middle restricted the dimensions of the paper she might get inside the ability, so Mr. Martinez supplied his experience. “Within the artwork world, it’s quite common to have an assistant,” he mentioned.

The collaborative drawings within the present embody a lady corresponding with somebody over a correctional providers messaging system stating “Ship Bitcoin” and a pencil drawing depicting a lady floating out to sea on a block of ice, entitled “Anna on ICE.”

Julia Morrison, an artist who created NFTs out of messages she mentioned the actor Armie Hammer despatched her, mentioned she first came across Ms. Sorokin’s sketches whereas scrolling by means of Instagram. Ms. Morrison, a co-curator of the present with Mr. Martinez, mentioned she recognized carefully with Ms. Sorokin’s story as a result of her personal mom served time in an immigration detention facility.

Ms. Morrison, who launched Mr. Martinez to Ms. Sorokin’s work, mentioned most individuals had over-simplified her backstory: “Nobody is only a villain, or only a hero.”

Initially, Mr. Martinez didn’t know how you can get in contact with Ms. Sorokin, who was then having fun with a media tour throughout her six-week stint of freedom between the top of her prison sentence and her arrest by ICE officers. So, he mentioned, he pitched an article to Web page Six of The New York Publish, that appeared with the headline: “Anna Sorokin’s art work might get its personal exhibition” and waited for her to name. And she or he did.

However her ICE detention inside days of their name halted the planning course of, they each mentioned, including that they reconnected by means of the texting app on the correctional facility and resumed planning earlier this 12 months.

The evening of the opening, Ms. Sorokin referred to as Mr. Martinez to verify in. He positioned the decision on speaker cellphone and held it excessive as individuals clambered to get an opportunity to say hi there and congratulate her on the present.

“Free Anna Delvey!” individuals chanted earlier than the decision ended.

Amongst these in attendance was Todd Spodek, her trial lawyer, who didn’t depart with any of the drawings.

“I have already got just a few choose items from the one-woman personal artwork present that occurred at 111 Centre Avenue,” he quipped, referencing the situation of her trial the place she typically sketched. However, he mentioned, he was glad to see individuals’s curiosity in her work.

“Anna Delvey impacts ladies now the best way ‘Struggle Membership’ affected males within the ’90s,” Mr. Martinez mentioned of Ms. Sorokin’s attraction. “All the ladies who have been within the present mentioned sure earlier than I completed my sentence.”

Greater than half of the artists within the present are ladies. 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 enjoyable of the royals,” Ms. Oh mentioned. “As a result of she took benefit of these varieties of individuals and so they often benefit from us.”

For the present, Ms. Morrison took a sledgehammer to a commode full of shredded papers impressed by former President Donald J. Trump. (She is now within the technique of minting a number of NFTs of photographs captured through the smashing.)

Mr. Martinez mentioned he hoped the exhibition would present immigration authorities that Ms. Sorokin would have extra to supply if she have been in a position to get out from behind bars.

Chris Martine, an artwork seller who has represented Ms. Sorokin for a number of months, mentioned he’s now planning a second exhibit — her first solo present — 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, amongst different giant cities. He anticipated Ms. Sorokin would full “the previous couple of items” by subsequent week.

However producing a present whereas detained is sophisticated. Ms. Sorokin confirmed she acquired 9”x 12” watercolor paper and 12 non-toxic coloured pencils however her set of watercolors — mistaken for make-up — didn’t go by means of the steel detector. She isn’t allowed to make use of the pencil sharpener, so asks a correctional officer to sharpen her pencils. She’s additionally working with out erasers: “So def can’t afford to make any errors,” Ms. Sorokin texted.

Mr. Martine mentioned he had texted her images that she requested for inspiration, amongst them: Balthazar Restaurant and Sant Ambroeus in SoHo; La Mamounia, the luxurious resort in Marrakesh the place she as soon as stayed; Passages Malibu, the habit remedy middle simply outdoors of which regulation enforcement officers arrested her in 2017; and the New York courthouse steps.

In an effort to assist coordinate the present, and since her facility-issued pill battery dies shortly, Ms. Sorokin has needed to barter with a volunteer group of detainees, who’ve swapped entry to their units for merchandising machine snacks that she buys by means of her commissary account. “I’m contributing to the native financial system,” Ms. Sorokin mentioned.

However Mr. Martine mentioned the trouble has been value it: “We wish the world to get a glimpse of Anna’s official entrance into the superb artwork world.”

He added, “However past that, artwork is barely partly about expertise and willpower and much more so in regards to the artist’s means to demand consideration by means of their persona and story. And that is the place she actually shines.”

From her detention cell, Ms. Sorokin mirrored on how far her artwork profession had come, constructed upon the failed try to begin her basis, and the sequence of occasions that had saved her behind bars for a lot of the final 4 and a half years.

“It’s ironic,” she mentioned. “How after having failed so publicly whereas making an attempt to construct A.D.F. a few years in the past, individuals are far more all for listening to my voice now than they have been again in 2017.”