The Story Of How Instagram censors artists, erases the LGBTQ community, and shames women’s bodies.
Betty Tompkins, Christen Clifford, Chiara No, Clarity Haynes, Joanne Leah, RawMeatCollective (Kyle Quinn), Karlheinz Weinberger, Kumasi Barnett, Lissa Rivera, Leah Schrager, Michael X Rose, Micol Hebron, Peter Clough, Shona McAndrew, Steve Lock (Bill Arning), Sara Jimenez, Tiffany Saint Bunny
Curated By Jac Lahav
While art galleries, museums, and community venues are shuttered social media platforms are crucial to cultural growth. Instagram’s Shadow tells the story of 17 artist’s experiencing social media censoring. Though it is Instagram specific, this show comments on a greater trend in corporations / mainstream America to visually sterilize the arts, LGBTQ communities, and our bodies.
THIS IS A TEXT HEAVY ART SHOW
In telling the story of Instagram censorship this show evolved into a visual essay. The ideal way to view it is by clicking the NEXT button, however viewers should feel free to bounce around using the top menu.
This show was written during the 2020 pandemic during which I became full time child care for our toddler. There is no better time for a show like this, and it might not have happened had we not become so reliant on digital media. I would like to thank all the artists for their time, patience, and amazing work. Also a special thanks to my hard working ass kicking wife Nora.
Jac Lahav + 42 Social Club
In late 2017 Social Media censorship took the spotlight when an image of The Venus of Willendorf, posted by social activist Laura Ghianda, was removed by Facebook. That an ancient sculpture, abstracted female figure, was classified as “obscene” shocked the arts community. Turns out this censorship was the tip of the iceberg and removing artwork is common practice on social media. Artists like Micol Hebron and Christen Clifford have been protesting Social Media censorship since 2014. More recently artist Clarity Haynes 2018 essay titled “I’m a Queer Feminist Artist. Why Are My Paintings Censored on Social Media?” weaves a compelling personal narrative of how social media policies, intended to protect users, are in fact crushing and silencing artist’s voices.
In today’s limited attention span / media rich world, social media is how creatives stay connected and informed. Instagram and Facebook have over 3 billion users worldwide. Over 60% of internet users ages 18 and 29 use Instagram. 70% of United States teenagers are on the platform. Instagram is a cultural juggernaut and unfathomably influential on the next generation.
Instagram is also crucial for contemporary artists to promote themselves. Galleries and fans are discovering new artist through Instagram. Collectors are purchasing art through Instagram. The phrase “artists must be on Instagram” has become a mantra for creatives hoping to develop a following.
Though social media is driven by user content, their policies dictate what users can and can’t post. Through policies that are unclear and hypocritical, Instagram / Facebook develops a culture of fear and anxiety among creators. Users are afraid to post “un-edited” content and must think twice before expressing their voices.
Artists / LGBTQ communities / users with non-conforming bodies have all had posts deleted, accounts erased, generally blocked from the mainstream feed, and even blocked from their own followers. This happens at crucial times like promoting upcoming shows and events.
One artist Shona McAndrew is currently blocked from the mainstream feed because she makes nude plus sized sculptures. Another artist, Steve Locke, had work deleted for including the word “faggot”, even though his work clearly speaks against homophobia. Kyle Quinn, who runs an online gay bookstore, had his account deleted 3 times. Other Artists like Tiffany Saint Bunny have been harassed and flagged unfairly with no recourse to out their accusers.
Instagram’s Shadow takes it’s title from the well documented Instagram “Shadow Ban” punishment. Though Instagram does not acknowledge the term “Shadow Ban”, it is real. Shadow Bans keep artists from reaching audiences. It represents the seedy underbelly of Instagram’s policy, and illustrates Instagram’s nefarious doppelganger. Shadow Bans allows instagram to throw a dark cloak over large segments of its user base, making them tangibly invisible. This shadow analogy is both psychological and quite literal.
Instagram’s community guidelines read: “We know that there are times when people might want to share nude images that are artistic or creative in nature, but for a variety of reasons, we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.”
These policies are stated for the “good of the greater community” and on face value they are to stop acts of child pornography, revenge porn, or blackmail. They are also attempting to make Instagram a safe space for those with triggers. HOWEVER these policies have huge ramifications both unintended for users and suspiciously convenient for Instagram.
Over 95 million photos are posted to Instagram every day. To police these images Instagram employs an image/text recognition algorithm to crawl through every photo. Instagram staff call this robot a “tool” and to supplement this tool human beings are hired to verify flagged photos. There are about 30,000 human moderators world wide and they are rumored to last on average 6 months on the job.
Once violations are flagged, increasingly severe punishments are automatically given for the severity and frequency of the violation. Specifics are not public, but the analogy of a “3 strikes your out” system fits. Users can appeal flagged posts, and more recently appeals do seem to be working. However this system is far from perfect and many artists find themselves appealing to a wall of silence.
Instagram is a community network. There are three spheres of community on the platform. Personal (The user, reflected by their personal archive), The Community (a user’s followers), and The Mainstream (all 1.5 billion Instagram users). When users violate Instagram’s policy, their connectivity to each of these three spheres is throttled as a punishments.
In addition, Instagram “unwittingly” hosts an army of users who enforce (sometimes erroneously) their policies. At first glance self policing is a great idea, however it invites internet trolls to forward hateful personal agendas. “Trolls” are commonly defined as users who make purposefully offensive comments, and the term is also a reference to the fishing expression. “Trolling” is a user scouring the internet looking for particular content. Instagram has trolls searching the platform for LGBTQ content and non-normative bodies. These images appear to be flagged in great frequency, and though there are tiers of violations for users there appear to be no policy regarding trolls who do Instagram a favor by highlighting accounts that should be sterilized for mainstream consumption. Also if a falsely flagged post is reinstated, Instagram protects the trolls anonymity. The troll can continue to follow / flag their victim. Adding insult to injury it is possible those false flags are kept on the users permanent violation record.
Instagram’s perspective is that policing 95 million photos daily will result in collateral damage. Unfortunately the communities hit hardest by these false flags are those who have traditionally suffered under “mainstream” governance.
Anti nudity policies have far reaching effects. Instagram bans genitalia and pubic hair for their “sexual nature”, going against the historical artistic value found in the natural human form. The nudity vs obscenity conversation gets murkier because Instagram distinguishes between male and female nipples. Male nipples are allowed to be posted, but female nipples are banned. This policy has deep repercussions. It inherently sexualized women “categorizing them as sexual objects to be consumed – and worse, that consumption is some kind of elicit pleasure, for which the female body should be punished by being silenced and unseen” (Micol Hebron).
Instagram’s policy also reinforces normative beauty standards. They hide behind a nudity policy to enforce a standard of fat shaming, banning plus-sized, and hiding non-normative bodies. These negative effects of Instagram policies are exacerbated by their secretive “black box” nature. Sometimes enforced and sometimes not, artists don’t know how or when punishment will rain down upon them. The key words we hear from artists are “FEAR and ANXIETY”. There are no clear rules and policy is illusive. Users are encouraged to increasingly self edit their voices. Not to mention the double standard where celebrity power users are able to post increasingly sexualized nude content. Instagram has two classes of users, those with the freedom to post and those without.
Missing from Instagram’s policy is CONTEXT. Using algorithms and trolls, Instagram fosters a “McCarthyist” culture where artists are fearful of blacklists and shadow bans. There is no distinction between pornography and fine art photography, exploitive hateful content and artworks fighting mainstream biases.
Under Instagram’s heavy shadow peaks a tiny ray of light. The company knows their policies effect artist, LGBTQ and non-conforming communities. In October 2019 Instagram hosted a meeting to discuss these issues with artists. Unfortunately little actionable data was made public from this meeting and Instagram continues to censor artists while still allowing celebrity nudity, objectification of women, rape, drug use, racism, gun violence, and hateful content.
Like all censorship struggles, we must keep fighting back and keep being vocal. Instagram’s Shadow shows how artists are changing their work, censoring themselves, and finding clever ways to undermine oppressive algorithms and trolls. Through the stories of 17 artists we discover how artists are being censored and fighting back.
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The Story Of How Instagram censors artists, erases the LGBTQ community, and shames women’s bodies.
While galleries, art museums, and community venues are shuttered social media platforms are crucial to cultural growth. Instagram’s Shadow shows how artists are changing their work, censoring themselves, and finding clever ways to undermine oppressive algorithms and trolls. Through the stories of 17 artists we discover how artists are being censored and fighting back.
From an artist sculpting plus-sized models, a cancer survivor, an artist/web-cam-girl with 3million followers, a publisher of queer art book, to the inventor of the male nipple pasty, this show decodes Instagram’s secret methods for censoring and throttling artists. Artists include: Betty Tompkins, Christen Clifford, Chiara No, Clarity Haynes, Joanne Leah, Kyle Quinn (RawMeatCollective), Karlheinz Weinberger, Kumasi Barnett, Lissa Rivera, Leah Schrager, Michael X Rose, Micol Hebron, Peter Clough, Shona McAndrew, Steve Lock (and Bill Arning), Sara Jimenez, Tiffany Saint Bunny (@TruckSlutsMag).
Instagram’s Shadow takes it’s title from Instagram’s well documented “Shadow Ban” punishment, keeping artists from reaching their audiences. This allows instagram to throw a dark cloak over large segments of it’s user base, making them tangibly invisible. The shadow analogy is both psychological and quite literal.
Though this show is Instagram specific, it says something greater about how corporations / mainstream America are visually sterilizing the arts, LGBTQ communities, and women. The ramifications of anti nudity policies as well as how Instagram (in particular) protects and benefits from trolls becomes quickly apparent. Instagram fosters a “McCarthyist” culture where artists are fearful of blacklists and shadow bans. There is no distinction between pornography and fine art photography, exploitive hateful content or artworks fighting mainstream biases.
In this show we explore a clear double standard where celebrity power users are able to post increasingly sexualized nude content. We explain how the “nudity vs obscenity” conversation degrades women (whose nipples are banned while male nipples are allowed). How hiding behind a nudity policy allows Instagram to enforce a standard of fat shaming, banning plus-sized, and hiding non-normative bodies. In addition these policies work to visibly erase a whole queer archive of photographs.
Under Instagram’s heavy shadow peaks a tiny ray of light. The company knows their policies effect artist, LGBTQ and non-conforming communities. In October 2019 Instagram hosted a meeting to discuss these issues with artists. Unfortunately little actionable data was made public from this meeting and Instagram continues to censor artists while still allowing celebrity nudity, objectification of women, rape, drug use, racism, gun violence, and hateful content.
This story is not over and like all censorship struggles, we must keep fighting back and keep being vocal.
Three essays have been written specifically for this exhibition. Sarah Cascone wrote a wonderful synopsis of the project. Bill Arning wrote about his online experience, from the birth of social media to recently being censored by Instagram. Tiffany Saint Bunny shares her thoughts about the erasure of the queer archive on Instagram. In addition we are providing a link to Clarity Haynes amazing Hyperallergic article recounting her artists experience being censored on social media.
A lot of work went into this exhibition and we are still collecting stories. In addition there is a hope to make this virtual exhibition into a physical catalogue. Many visitors have donated to help make this project possible and we appreciate your generous help!
Even if you can’t donate now, please send us a quick message if you liked the project and want to be on our mailing list for future shows!
Micol Hebron is a feminist artist, writer, and teacher. Much of her recent work is about the hypocrisy of Instagram allowing male nipples yet banning photos of female nipples. Hebron’s fight with social media began in 2014 during the exhibition “Thanks for the Mammaries”, a breast cancer fundraiser. The artist went to the show topless. Hebron says “There was nothing sexualized about me showing up topless”. It was a celebration of breasts, surviving cancer, and an homage to her mother.
Photos of Hebron from the exhibition were removed from Facebook the next day. Images of Hebron topless were flagged as inappropriate because they showed “female nipples”. Hebron was shocked. As a response she took an open source Wikimedia image of a male nipple and started superimposing it over her own. Very quickly the Male Nipple Pasty went viral with many artists using the concept to protest Instagram. (NOTE: the Wikimedia entry for nipple has since been replaced from a white male nipple to a dark skinned female nipple).
“So many things seem absurd about the female nipple ban. Why are female nipples prohibited and not male nipples? The implication is that female nipples are automatically and by default “sexual” and therefore inappropriate. It is almost as if Facebook/Instagram are admitting that it – and society – can not help but see women’s bodies as threatening, sexual objects. And this implies that women do not have autonomy; they do not have control or final say in how their bodies are seen and perceived. Society is categorizing them as sexual objects to be consumed – and worse, that consumption is some kind of elicit pleasure, for which the female body should be punished by being silenced and unseen.
Secondly, how can Facebook or Instagram tell if I am a female or a male, just by looking at my nipples? This is an essentialist, cissexist view – implying that if you have longer, fattier nipples (and mammaries), you are a female, and if you have small, flatter, hairy nipples, you are a male. So, what does Facebook/Instagram do about transmen and transwomen? What about gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and genderqueer folks? As if society hasn’t marginalized these bodies enough already, to have a gender identity imposed upon a body based on nipples, and not one’s own declaration of being (“I am male” “I am female”, “I am gender nonconforming”), is another slap in the face.” - MICOL HEBRON
IMAGE CREDIT: Images Courtesy The Artist, Micol Hebron.
On October 22, 2019 roughly 20 artists, curators, and influencers attended a closed door meeting at the NY Instagram/Facebook headquarters to discuss how social media is censoring artists. Participants were required to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement, furthering Instagrams history of obfuscation and secrecy. Micol Hebron was one of the artists in attendance and has been very vocal about what occurred. After the meeting Hebron posted an image of herself topless in front of the FaceBook offices. Her Instagram account was quickly deleted just 3 hours after leaving the meeting! Luckily Hebron had just met with high up Instagram policy people and had a contact number. She texted her contact and was reinstated within 10 min. Most users do not have this type of access and once banned, simply give up.
Image Courtesy Micol Hebron
Lissa Rivera is a photographer and curator at the Museum of Sex, NYC. Rivera’s artwork explores gender stereotypes. Her photographs are saturated with narrative, placing the traditional male artist gaze on its head and transforming her gender non-binary partner BJ into a contemporary neo-classical object of desire.
Rivera’s photographs and her curatorial projects have both been censored on social media. Her artwork has been scrutinized for nudity, which is especially poignant because they challenge the exact issues of male gaze that Instagram’s policy encourages (specifically in sexualizing the female body).
Also in her role, as curator of the Museum of Sex, Rivera must be especially careful. Instagram is an essential marketing tool for small businesses and museums are no exception. In addition to sexualizing the female body, Instagram policy reinforces a culture that shames realistic views of sex. It’s policies are confusing because the platform also encourages celebrities to sexualize themselves in hyper stylized “skin-a-max” photoshoots. Below are images from the museum’s feed.
NOTE: when reposting of screen-grabs from previously censored work, Instagram’s algorithm will recognize the tiny blurry thumbnail and count them as a new violation toward the user.
Museum of Sex Instagram, Screenshots, Curated by Lisa Ano
IMAGE CREDIT: Venus (Series: Beautiful Boy), Archival pigment print, 2017, Metamorphosis (Series: Beautiful Boy) , Archival pigment print, 2015, Court (Series: Silence of Spaces), Archival pigment print, 2017. Images Courtesy The Artist, Lissa Rivera.
Shona McAndrew’s life size sculptures show subjects in their most personal spaces. One self portrait features McAndrew in bed with her partner, another presents her on the toilet brushing her teeth, others simply stand nude and proud.
McAndrew’s posts are removed under the pretense of nudity but more and more the artist finds her sculptures are scrutinized because they are plus sized bodies. Here we see Instagram’s enforcement of conventional beauty standards in full effect.
The most egregious example is a few years ago when McAndrew’s sculpture Charlotte (which shows female nipples) caused her account to be banned on the same day sports illustrated posted Kate Upton with a wet t-shirt, clearly showing her nipples.
McAndrew’s account is also Shadow Banned. This effects her exposure in many ways. With 28k followers, she usually gets over 100 likes in the first couple minutes of posting an image. A recent post of “Charlotte” only received 1 like in 3 mins (and that was from McAndrew’s boyfriend who was sitting on the couch next to her). This post IS allowed under Instagram’s policy however the algorithm is punishing her in a new creative way by not letting followers see it.
Example of an image that was not deleted but still censored. The image on the left only had 1 like in the first 10 second. It was “Shadowed” by Instagram’s algorithm. The image on the right had almost 2,000 likes after the artist re-posted it with nipple pasties.
Instagram admits they remove content which violates their policy, however they don’t acknowledge the term “Shadow Ban”. This is a secretive way in which Instagram limits the exposure of certain users without their awareness or consent. No one knows what the rules are but here are some issues users have run into:
User’s post will not show up in the main stream “discover” page.
User’s posts may not appear in their followers feed.
User’s posts will not appear under any hashtags (if they hashtag an image #contemporaryart, it will not appear while searching that hashtag).
User’s name is harder to search. Often when searching for a user, an approximation of their name will lead you to them. Shadow Banned users must have their name spelled exactly to be found.
Artists have found that using certain words reduces their outreach. In one instance saying work is “For Sale” limited engagement. In another stating #Ihatecancer received fewer likes.
IMAGE CREDIT: “Charlotte”, 72”x38”x32”, Paper mache, Wood, Aluminum Wire, Linen, and Acrylic, 2016-2017, Courtesy Chart Gallery and Shona McAndrew
Haynes is known for painting large scale realist portraits of torsos. The artist lovingly depicts subjects with tattoos, surgeries, hormones, and jewelry. These paintings are more than portraits, they are visual anatomical archives of a subjects history. Haynes describes the body as a glorious altar of flesh and many of the paintings depict breasts with nipples. These are clearly paintings and should be allowed under Instagram’s current policy, however to this day Haynes’ works are still flagged.
Haynes has had posts removed, accounts erased, and is currently Shadow Banned. She finds the Shadow Ban particularly frustrating. For instance, while promoting her recent show Haynes was Shadow Banned after posting just two photos. This throttling of ones connection to others is especially brutal during an exhibition, the most important time for an artist to promote their work.
READ HAYNES ESSAY ON HER EXPERIENCE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP
IMAGE CREDIT: Grace, oil on linen on board, 17" x 22", 2018, Sara Morning Starr, oil on canvas, 18" x 18", 2019, Davi, oil on canvas, 18" x 18", 2019. All Images Courtesy The Artist.
U.S. Manager, Karlheinz Weinberger Foundation, Bruce Hackney
@Karlheinzweinberger
Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006), was a Swiss photographer. His best known work was with youth rebels in Switzerland, becoming extremely influential on the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s fashion world. Though he is known for these intimate rebel photos, however the vast majority of Weinberger's archive contains thousands of male nude portraits.
These images were both deleted by Instagram, even though they were self censored. Apparently the word “penis” is considered obscene.
The Weinberger estate’s U.S. manager is Bruce Hackney. In 2016 Hackney started an Instagram account to promote Weinberger’s work, archive it, and communicate with Weinberger’s fanbase. Like many small businesses this Instagram account has a financial component. Since Weinberger doesn’t have any gallery presence, if someone want to see his works, they go to Instagram.
Hackney takes great issue that photography is distinguished from painting, sculpture and drawing. Nudity is allowed in painting and drawing (though often still flagged). Instagram’s differentiation basically claims that photography is not “art”. Hackney has also had posts removed that do not show nudity and adhere to Instagram’s policies. Recently the Weinberger account was removed in January. Only after many conversations with Instagram did Hackney finally get it re-instated. During these talks instagram pulled out his numerous “violations” of their policy, including posts to Instagram Stories, which are supposed to “disappear”. Instead all data uploaded to Instagram can be kept as examples of a users “violations”. The whole experience screamed “big brother is watching you”.
BELOW: On the left are original Weinberger nudes. In order to post them, Hackney cropped the photos at the genitalia. These works were subsequently deleted from instagram and deemed violations.
IMAGE CAPTION: Top 3 Photos: Zurich circa 1962, 35mm Agfachrome slide | St. Petersinsel, 1964, vintage photograph, 2 x 2 inches | St. Petersinsel, 1964, vintage photograph, 3 x 4 inches. Bottom 2 Nudes: “Zurich” circa middle 1970’s. All Images Copyright by Karlheinz Weinberger Stiftung, Zurich. Courtesy Artist Resources Management, New York
An important insight that came from Hackney’s conversation with Instagram is their original intention behind the nudity policy. Facebook/Instagram are worried about consent. This is a crucial concept in online content creation. Furthermore, most people are in favor of stopping child pornography, revenge porn, blackmail. Simply think of all the trouble caused by teenagers sharing nude photos of each other online.
Instagram doesn’t usually take issue with consent in photography. Photography law is a murky area in social media content. In the United States it is illegal for someone to commercially use your image without consent. This doesn’t matter for your average fun loving Instagram account, but many accounts are monetized and there is serious money involved here.
Also Instagram seems to be throwing out the baby with the bath water. Most artists claim that context is the missing ingredient to Instagram’s policies. There should be more human moderation and Instagram should be able to use context to determine a fine art account from bullies with hateful agendas.
IMAGE: A screengrab from Pink Meth a site where users can post/view “revenge porn” (distributing sexually explicit material without consent).
Kyle Quinn
@kylequinnnn | @rawmeatcollective
Artist Kyle Quinn runs a fine art publishing house based in Brooklyn NY. Raw Meat Collective publishes titles that give voice to a Queer Femme perspective in contemporary art. Publishers like this are one of the few contacts for isolated pockets around the country giving individuals online representation and the ability to become members of a larger community.
Quinn is painfully aware of Instagram’s importance as a marketing platform. Small independent booksellers and contemporary artists rely on Instagram to connect like-minded communities. However, Quinn’s personal artist account has been deleted three separate times. This erasure is common in much of the LGBTQ communities where users must often have backup accounts ready to go. Last year Quinn’s account was erased (later re-instated) after these photos of a sex worker in New Jersey were posted. These photos do not appear to violate Instagram’s nudity or female nipple policy.
Because Quinn’s posts are highly scrutinized, he sometimes “archive” posts in order to maintain an visual history and hopefully bypass the algorithm. “Archived” posts are available only to the user and therefore should be unreachable by anyone who would find these images obscene. However the images in his private archive are also disappearing and then these “private” removed posts are used against his account in terms of “violations”.
IMAGE CREDIT: Image 1: Junk Yard Jess #13, Polaroid Film, 2019. Image 2: Junk Yard Jess #04, Fuji Wide 300 Film, 2019. All Images Courtesy Kyle Quinn & Red Meat Collective.
In October 2019 curator Bill Arning hosted No Trigger Warnings, an exhibition exploring the line between tasteful expression and provocation. During the exhibition a stage was set up with Steve Locke’s “Untitled (GOD IS LOVE/you little faggot)” as a backdrop to host special events. Locke is an African American artist exploring themes of masculinity and homosexuality. His work explores growing up black and gay in Texas. Arning attempted to post images from the show’s events and had them deleted. (READ ARNINGS ESSAY ON HIS EXPERIENCE HERE)
It is unclear if the word “faggot” was flagged under Instagram’s hate speech policy or if trolls flagged the images in protest. Either way, the result was Arning re-posting a cropped version of Locke’s work. The idea that Instagram forced Locke’s artwork to be cropped in half (erasing the homophobic part of the story) mirrors a closeted experience familiar to many in the LGBTQ community.
Left: Original post from No Trigger Warnings. Right: Subsequent posts were cropped.
IMAGE CREDIT: TOP IMAGE: Steve Locke Untitled (God Is Love/You Little Faggot) , 2018, Jacquard Tapestry in Cotton and Rayon, 48 × 72 in Courtesy The Artist. BOTTOM IMAGES: No Trigger Warnings - Bill Arning Exhibitions - October 9 - Flatland Gallery, Houston Texas. LEFT: Comedian and visual Artist Bob Morrisey hosting Gay Shame Parade. RIGHT: Poet John Pluecker reads from his new Chapbook Hooks
Essay by Bill Arning
I have a backyard with a pool. That is possible in my life because I left NYC in 2000. Now three months into quarantine I am very happy for that choice. I fill my bird feeder in the morning, visit artists studios around the world via FaceTime, FaceBook Messenger and What’s App and I write essays that perhaps art-curious readers might have more time to read during lockdown.
I was born and raised in New York City, the city that has been the center of the art world for the last eleven decades. The possibility that downtown Manhattan might lose its preeminence as the trading/exhibition center still seems impossible but since Paris lost its primacy over a century ago we know it’s inevitable that this center too shall pass.
Whether that means a new art capitol or a reimagined period without clear centers is unknown. Such systemic epochal shifts causally follow technological advances. And how forces beyond art, aesthetics, and philosophy will negatively impact much needed improvements and how our collective best intentions wave little to do with how this happens.
We might heartily believe a decentralized art world Would make for better arts production, more grounded and involved artists, being based in locations that feed their creative agency best. New possibilities for makers produced by technology advances will only take hold if artists are convinced that using them will make for better art making lives.
Even as Brooklyn took on a greater prominence as an art manufacture location its stature was always in relation to its easy proximity to the location of the prime art trading locus that Manhattan continues to be. In 2000 I moved to Cambridge MA and in 2009 to Houston TX.
While I have lovingly explored other art scenes throughout my career - both domestically and internationally—I had never before been so deeply involved with artists for whom living in New York was not the goal. I always assumed everyone given a choice would pick the hustle of trying to “make it in NYC”. And learning other life choices were possible shattered my sense of New Yorker exceptionalism.
Still Boston artists were very aware of the proximity to New York and its gallery possibilities and most stayed for the life style choice of Boston-area steady teaching jobs. Any younger artist with ambition was monthly on the bizarrely cheap “Chinatown bus” that drove from Boston to New York’s Chinatown at breakneck speed. Older artists joined me in the Amtrak “quiet car” more expensive but a blissful four hours of quality reading time with Long Island sound views. There was a community that noticed when artists ambitions started failing them and they chose quiet time weekends at home over connecting with New York, the first sign that the studio would soon be abandoned and teaching would become their ONLY creative outlet.
“Life style” was not the reason as Boston is nearly as expensive as New York and few had the huge studios and low cost of living that I soon learned made the rest of America appear on the mental horizon as possible future location locations. Artists, who had suffered the indignities of two money jobs and three roommates to get to NYC for their careers and to spend their youthful energy at noise concerts, sex parties and dance performances were suddenly “city shopping.”
City Shopping was endemic as artists near my age were watching their studio rents triple in a few years and realized that even if they sold everything they made they would still be losing money and be supporting their studio practice with graphic design or erotic massage. My studio conversations started with, “could I be based in Detroit? Or I heard San Antonio is cool, and that was always predicated on the ease of being in touch via the Internet.
I have a long history curatorially working with artists whose work is queer, political and highly sexually charged. AIDS defined my generation and making work that did not shrink form the joys of sex was politically required. Those types of artists exist everywhere and I immediately connected with that community in my new home of Houston, Texas.
The museum world exists in the perpetual cognitive dissonance of being “edgy” on command and within very proscribed limits – a contraction I had fully internalized as necessary. Having to build a room to keep sensitive viewers from seeing Marilyn Minter’s porn paintings seemed allowable. Attending a three-hour all-staff meeting debating whether an MPA photograph that included a painted female nipple needed to be hidden from donors seemed merely a funny soul-killing part of the game.
My first commercial foray under my own business name of Bill Arning Exhibitions was a huge sex, drugs and death shindig called No Trigger Warnings, at Houston’s storied Flatland Gallery. Fans of my curatorial practice all walked in and noted this was the type of show I clearly wanted the museum to do, but couldn’t.
I embraced my dinosaur status as a 59-year-old gay man who still believed the path to mental liberation was through desire and fueled by normal libidinal impulses. I knew that young people who should be celebrating their sexuality were instead self-policing for fear that their lusts would reveal them to be less “woke” than their friends. They would rather “cancel” a culture heroes life work than admit that the business of being a sexual human is messy and prone to multiple interpretations. This generational shift appears universal with only a few dissenting opinions representing more ribald future utopias.
No Trigger Warnings was intended as a statement against self –policing of all sorts. I was perpetually angry for my friends who teach would tell me about the climate of fear and censorship coming from supposed progressive thinkers. Mark Flood made a work for the show that was hung right as you entered that merely said in white on silver letters Fake Outrage.
Flood is the most famous artist who chose to remain in Houston after achieving fame along with Dario Robleto, Joseph Havel and Trenton Doyle Hancock. Texas is very self-conscious of its status as nearer a country than a state. There are multiple books on Texas art history that one must read to work in art here. My career today is involved in sowing Texas artists wherever I can and getting them attention outside the state and the country,.
(Artworks from No Trigger Warnings at Flatland Gallery, October 2019 by Scooter LaForge, Colin Radcliffe and Mark Flood)
In all the city-shopping my friends are doing I always suggest that Houston and San Antonio are increasingly marvelous places to be based. Large inexpensive studios and a supportive collector base are two factors well worth considering in deciding where to be. Good food makes up for the lack of walkable neighborhoods. Such a relocation requires that one remains a worldly Texas artist and most rise the social media challenge that being in the southern middle of a vast country entails. Yet that is easier for an abstract painter specifically because of online censorship.
My audience is increasingly global and now that I am selling art too my collectors are everywhere and I knew the odds of selling anything to art collectors in Houston was remote, and in fact only one piece stayed local. I was mainly sending PDFs of all the work to folks I knew would be interested but I relied on Instagram and my dealer Instagram account to attract people new to me, but here was the rub. Most of the work could at least potentially get me kicked off my social media.
I anticipated it would be the sexual content that would send me to Instagram and FaceBook prison. I had a massive painting by Scooter LaForge featuring a scintillating auto-fellatio scene, and Erik Hanson Bluto three way orgies, but no, social media allowed those.
It was a beautiful, tragic, and poignant work by Steve Locke, a tapestry which showed a photo of the artist as a seven year old child repeated twice, once with the phrase God Is Love and the second with the words “you Little Faggot” the piece summarily showed how his family of origin sent him strongly mixed messages as to his value in God’s universe and his family.
As part of the show I had evening events, Film Screenings, performances, dance, circus acts and stand up comedy, Comedy came first with a marvelous night organized by Bob Morrissey a writer, visual artist and stand up comic who curates a regular night in Houston called Gay Shame Parade- "Stand Up from Gays, Probable Gays, & People We Wish Were Gay." Keisha Hunt a tiny black lesbian who is funny and dirty enough to make me blush was the headliner. But the natural place to have the performers perform was in front of the Locke piece and that was where the trouble started.
I am GOOD at my social media. I was curator at MIT List Center when FaceBook was invented ten blocks away and I was in a number of MIT arts discussions about how to use these new platforms to get MIT students to make art a part of their lives.
I know the bulk of the people that intended to attend would be within a five-minute drive and if I posted images in real time they could still make it to see the final comedians. I posted a great photo of Morrissey hand raised like a preacher with God and Faggot bookending his head. I was immediately warned that “Hate speech was not allowed on Instagram
Any human seeing the artwork would realize the Faggot was being used politically and not against queer folks but knowing ones powerlessness with Instagram I immediately cropped the photo until Morrissey was just seen looking like a Southern preacher preaching with “God Is Love” as the caption. The comic is rigorously opposed to all forms of organized religion and immediately responded to the Instagram image that “God Is Love” was NOT his message. By the time Keisha Hunt was on stage telling jokes about her vagina I was positioned so Faggot would be nowhere to be seen in any image online.
The rest of the night I posted images without the offending Faggot and barely thought about the implications of my acceptance of heinous censorship. I am of course in a weird bind here. As a big proud Faggot I don’t mind being called Faggot and usually respond with a polite thank you for the recognition. I have a hard time being angered when I get a “cocksucker” hurled at me cause I am proud of that talent as well. But I don’t want my more fragile queer friends feeling at risk when those words circle around them. My desire to explain how Locke was using Faggot was easy in person but in social media world not so much.
LEFT: Comedian and visual Artist Bob Morrisey hosting Gay Shame Parade as part of No Trigger Warning RIGHT: Monologist and HIV anti-stigma activist performs at Flatland Gallery
The closing event was a reading by New Orleans artist Skylar Fein entitled an evening of diabolical Faggotry and the FaceBook event prompted a few raised eyebrows and stern emails but it was not taken down.
I wanted to complain about what I thought was a shocking event of censorship but it Turns out my community of creative people in Texas had so long been dependent on Instagram to get into dialog with the global art world that my shocked anger at having to crop Faggot out, misrepresent both the art worked and the performances was normalized.
Still I am constantly shocked by what causes the Instagram algorithm to bite. I saw a show presented by New Discretions in New York of Tom Bianchi wall constructions which I Instagrammed and was taken down just for a single offending muscular and sexy male butt. I merely regrammed a marvelous Nathan Ritterpusch painting that he posted without incident and I was not only censored but FaceBook banned me from posting new content for 48 hours.
I took a young artist from Houston on a New York gallery tour and he surprised the dealers who came out to greet me with knowing all of their rosters. He was all of 20 and lived with his DJ dad in the Houston Heights and rarely got to visit NYC. When I asked how he knew these artists he said he spent all day every day on gallery Instagram pages. I was impressed by his youthful passions so I am clearly a fan of what these platforms make possible.
I dream of another better platform free of censorship, so artists from outside the centers will no longer need to incompletely represent their work to reach a larger world.
Kumasi Barnett paints over comic book covers redefining classic narratives into explorations of U.S. racial tensions. His most prolific work transforms the Amazing Spider Man into the Amazing Black Man. Swapping Spider Man’s leotard for a hoodie and jeans, Barnett creates a provocative commentary on the experience of black youth in America. This transformation is especially brutal because of the original Spider Man’s fraught relationship with the police.
In 2019 Barnett posted one of his most provocative transformations “Nigger #5 (Gray Suite Version) to Instagram. This post was NOT flagged by the algorithm, in fact Barnett received a notification to monetize the image and advertise it. With an important show at the NY Armory coming up, Barnett decided to give “monetizing” a shot.
The advertisement was rejected immediately notifying Barnett that his post didn’t meet community guidelines. Barnett was shocked, especially because Instagram had courted him. Barnett let the experience roll off his back not wanting to fight Instagram to take his money. The experience however left Barnett feeling like his voice had been edited. This experience is mirrored in many artists who don’t wish to fight, yet feel treated unfairly.
Not only Body Politics are at risk under Instagram’s policies. Social media has a powerful roll in changing our narrative on language. Does Instagram allow us to have conversations around important racial language or by blanket banning certain words is it impossible to even have a dialogue.
IMAGE CREDIT: All Images Courtesy The Artist, Kumasi Barnett
Michael X Rose creates neo-outsider hyper-narrative paintings where madness, mayhem and sublime beauty merge into bizarre narratives. We may discover a big foot fighting zombies, centaurs pillaging villages, colosseum fighters battling to the death, or ghosts haunting Nazis.
Like Barnett, Rose is unable to advertise his work on Instagram. These paintings do not meet community guidelines due to “sensational content, excessive violence, or it’s simple shocking material”. Rose takes this as a personal complement, even though it is hard from a career perspective. Instagram’s rejection claims to foster a “positive global community” yet it is unclear how this is being achieved.
The surreal painting above, featuring a brain transplanted automaton fighting Adolph Hitler, was deleted all together. Was it for violence or for representing a swastika? Instagram was not specific in it’s deletion.
It is unclear if Rose’s difficulty is due to nudity, violence, or just plain “being weird’. However, his works are paintings and should be allowed under current policies. In further insult, Instagram suggests “What to do next: Avoid using images or videos that may shock or scare users”. Essentially they are asking artists to sterilize their works and reinforce a mainstream echo chamber of highly stylized couch art.
IMAGE CREDIT: The Sacrificial Maiden on the Bier of the Druid Overlords, (III) Oil on canvas, 9”x 12”, Andromeda. Oil on canvas. 16”x 20”, Samson in the Temple of Dagon, Oil on canvas, 38”x 52”, The Robot Brain vs. Hitler's Corpse! . Casein on Panel, 12”x 16”. All Images Courtesy The Artist
Joanne Leah is an artist/activist. Her work collaborates with sex workers, members of the trans community and non-traditional models to depict real bodies in ways that are under-represented by mainstream Instagram. These images are fantastic colorful obfuscations of nude bodies.
Leah’s recent photography is a direct commentary on Instagram policy of differentiating paintings of nudity from photography. With colorful, almost neon swaths of paint, Leah asks why paintings of nude bodies are ok but not paint “on” nude bodies. She brings our attention to the natural beauty of the human form, asking if “real” bodies need to be dressed up to be beautiful. In the examples below, Leah crops and edits her works to further questions how far one can obfuscate these images before the AI overlords no longer find them obscene.
From the beginning Leah’s posts have been deleted. She started fighting back three years ago with a petition to stop social media censorship. More recently Leah helped organize the October 2019 sit down between artists and Instagram policy makers. She continues to run the Artists Against Social Media Censorship website chronicling the experiences of censored artists.
IMAGE CREDIT: Images in top slideshow: Forgetting Myself, 2020, One Day At A Time, 2020, Purely Decorative, 2016, Revisitor, 2018. All Images Courtesy The Artist, Joanne Leah
Chiara No creates pseudo-sexual highly politicized video art. She finds inspiration in sex worker and porn star social media accounts, decoding loopholes in Instagram’s policy algorithm. Her videos becomes absurdly cropped political references to sexualized content that often slide right under Instagram’s radar.
No’s recent videos feature “crotch shots” where the artist writes political slogans on her bare thighs. Often she crops the background and her knees from the picture. These crops point a finger at the absurdity of Instagram’s algorithm obscenity censor. One video including the artist’s knees was flagged immediately, while the same post, closely cropped to her crotch was not flagged.
Since No’s work is ignored by Instagram’s algorithm, trolls are her biggest challenge. These nefarious users search out content they disagree with and continually report it. There is very little oversight as to what and how often these stalker like trolls can harass users.
Where Instagram has a strict policy of punishing artists for violating community guidelines, there are no guidelines for falsely reporting or harassing others. Even after artists appeal false accusations, their trolls are allowed to continue following them anonymously.
This is a declaration of war to artists like Chiara No, and her work strikes at the heart of Instagram’s policies. Yet Instagram’s lack of policing trolls does create a culture of fear and confusion and unlike this artist, many wish to only live their lives and not wage a war for self expression.
IMAGE CREDIT: All Images Courtesy The Artist
Instagram is a two headed monster. One side is an amazing venue for visual creativity and community outreach. The other side is one of celebrity, excess, and a mainstream cis-sex-sells mentality.
Chiara No has a great example of the double standard Instagram delivers. At one point an image of her bare behind covered by her hand was deleted. The artist was shocked since accounts like @justthongs post revealing hyper sexualized images of butts daily with no apparent recourse.
In another example Micol Hebron found it shocking that her work (including female nipples) is banned while Justin Bieber (135 million followers) can post a clear shot of his butt ( though subtly blurred at the crack). There is a double standard here between celebrity “influencers” supporting a mainstream sexualized ethos and those members of smaller communities who flaunt conventional beauty standards.
Artist Tiffany Saint Bunny points out that when a picture of “singer” Miley Cyrus showing her nipples was reported, Instagram had no problem with the inherent nudity involved.
Artist photographer @__Adey__ is a great example of this double standard. Even though she has over 90k followers, Adey’s account was removed after posting the image on the right. On the left is a post by Kim Kardashian that did not fall under the same scrutiny. Is Kim Kardashian’s blurry nipple really the panacea to Instagram’s prudish robot police or is something else going on here?
Image: www.artistsagainstcensorship.com
The examples of double standards on Instagram are endless, however this case study with two images showing women’s crotches is particularly interesting. The image on the left from OnaArtist remained on Instagram, where the image on the right from TruckSlutsMag was deleted. The discernible difference is pubic hair on the removed image. What does this say about Instagram and our culture that pubic hair is the only violating factor here?
Sara Jimenez is a Filipinx-Canadian artist exploring pre-existing narratives of place and lineage through abandoned objects, debris and colonial texts. Through material experimentation Jimenez rearranges elements of her personal collection into collages, sculptures, installations, and videos. In many of these works Jimenez appears nude. The artist is well aware of Instagram’s nudity policy and only posts allusions to fully naked bodies.. As such, her work is not deleted by Instagram because of self censorship. The real question is “are viewers witnessing a less than manifestation of her work?”
The image on the left is indicative of artwork that Jimenez can post to Instagram.
The image on the right is a screenshot of an full artwork that Jimenez is unable to post.
Recently Jimenez received a government sponsored art exhibition. The curator invited her to participate, asking Jimenez to be aware that the organization had a conservative audience and that certain kinds of nudity could be an issue. These boundaries of nudity were vague. Jimenez's work showed highly edited digitized bodies with brief moments of nudity, within a surreal setting with no explicit sexual charge. The organization leaders expressed concern about these images, but again, remained vague about the details. There is an illusive “worry” that a citizen/viewer in a predominantly conservative white town will be scandalized by seeing a naked woman and that subsequently the organization will lose all their funding. Of course nobody says that out loud. The fear of losing funding because of a cis-white majority’s displeasure is endemic to American culture. This attitude is reflected strongly in corporate entities too.
Sadly we live in a world where only the most vocal, angry, persistent artists remain visible and those who are not natural fighters often give into public pressure.
IMAGE CREDIT: All Images Courtesy The Artist, Sara Jimenez, ”…for the view was duplicated there”, 3-channel video, loop (Sound in collaboration with Lau Nau) (2019)
Christen Clifford is a feminist, performance artist, writer, curator, professor, and mother. Much of Clifford’s artwork is documentarian. Though Clifford plays with the boundaries of Instagram, she doesn’t consider herself an “Instagram artist”. Instead these digital constraints shape her works presentation. From aspect ratio cropping to character limits to relational hashtagging, the artist riffs on these structures to develop a public archive.
In 2016, Clifford was diagnosed with ovarian and uterine cancer. She began documenting her experience including recording her mammograms and surgeries. Clifford posted images of her experience to Instagram. Many of these images were abiding by Instagram’s policies, yet were still deleted. She thinks her works were removed due to her text and hashtags (like #fuckcancer, #IHateCancer and #vagina). These words may be highly scrutinized and therefore penalized by Instagram. Clifford found that pictures of her face with happy words got much greater interaction, but realistic posts of her struggle with cancer were quelled. Since Instagram’s Shadow Ban algorithm is a black box it is hard to know for sure what is happening.
Clifford’s relationship with social media censorship goes back almost 15 years. At that time Facebook removed images of mothers breastfeeding, calling them “obscene”. The artist was an early lactivist fighting for the normalization of breastfeeding. Her work continues to explore feminist body politics with a recent installation of menstrual blood collected from cis, trans and non binary humans displayed in perfume bottles.
I Want Your Blood, Installation view Eva Presenhuber 2020
IMAGE CREDIT: All Images Courtesy The Artist
@cloughabunga
Peter Clough is a queer artist, activist and curator based in Harlem NY. Using images of his own body, Clough questions the boundaries between inside and outside, subject and object. His work brings up important questions about the line between pornography and “art”.
In a recent piece Clough recorded himself giving a blowjob to his partner. The work was filmed on the same camera that shot Spider Man, using the highest production value. Clough then slowed this 10 minute act down to 2 hours and 9 minutes. He asks the viewer to decontextualize erotic acts and if a sexual act is done lovingly, should it still be considered obscene pornography? Furthermore what is at risk when making these intimate acts visible? And if sexual content is made for an art audience, is it no longer pornography or do current the labels of “art” and “pornography” even matter?
For the purposes of this show the point is mute. Clough is aware of Instagram’s policies, and does not post most of his artwork to the platform. Through self censoring with blurry images, Clough’s edits diminish the exact question of intimate visibility he’s asserting.
In a recent post, Clough highlighted a fellow artists, Patrick McNab’s, recent solo show. Clough chose a post that was purposefully tame and was immediately deleted. Clough appealed and the photograph was put back up 3 days later. At first this seems like a triumph! Instagram might be getting better. However the post was re-instated 3 days later, effectively burying it in Clough’s feed. Instagram is a platform based on immediacy. If something is removed from the feed for even a day, it’s engagement is shot and it will remain unseen, effectively shutting down an artist’s visibility.
IMAGE CREDIT: All Images Courtesy The Artist And Haul Gallery
Betty Tompkins is a pioneer of Feminist art. Her work involves photorealistic paintings/drawings of close-up heterosexual and homosexual intimate acts. Early in 2019 Tompkin’s Instagram account was deleted after posting a photo from her exhibition catalogue (Fuck Painting #1, currently in the collection of the Paris Centre Pompidou.)
“It was really clear that it was a printed page I was showing; you could see the fold. I mean, by that time, I was used to them taking my posts down, because they’ve taken down an awful lot. But that time, they took my account down.”
Tompkin’s account was later restored but she has a lot to say on the subject. “Instagram has nominated themselves to be the online voice for the art world,” Tompkins continued. “And they’ve succeeded. You can’t be active in the art world without a voice on Instagram.”
“Before Instagram, there were 15, 20 years between governments censoring me, so I was surprised each time there too. There are certain things I do when being censored to keep my sanity, and for Paris and for Japan, I did censored drawings of the pieces that were actually censored.” (2019 Interview with W Magazine)
This is not Tompkins first experience with censorship. Her work has been censored by governments in Paris (1973) and in Japan (2006). The work was stopped by customs who confiscated the works in transit. In response, Tompkins started a whole new series of work known as “Censored Paintings” in which she actively censors areas of her imagery to revisit the experience of being shut down.
IMAGE CREDIT: Fuck Grid #24, 2005, graphite on paper, 17 x 14 ins. 43.2 x 35.6cm, Censored Grid #10, 2008, pencil and ink on paper, 17 x 14 in., 43.2 x 35.6 cm | All Images Courtesy of Betty Tompkins and P·P·O·W, New York
Government censorship has occurred throughout the ages. Usually the more fascist the government, the more content is deleted - think Nazi book burning and the Taliban destroying thousand year old artwork.
The analogy of government censorship to corporate social media companies censoring their users is fitting. Instagram and Facebook have grown so enormous that they are no longer simple corporations. They have over 3 billion users worldwide and Facebook even has it’s own currency!). With all this growth, the average user often gets lost. Furthermore the very nature of a corporation discourages an average user’s input. After a business finds that user base, growth policies are most likely driven by stockholders and legal liability.
The closest structure of government that Facebook/Instagram fall under would be a feudalistic model. Like early feudalistic governments there are obvious separate classes of citizen here. Most users fall into the peasant class. These “average” users can only have grievances addressed if they know someone in the royal court (Instagram employees) or can get their story taken up by the press.
It does look like Instagram is trying to work on their appeal progress. The addition of more moderators is hopeful for Facebook/Instagram evolution into a more democratic state. However appeals are still not always working, context is still missing from violations, and Instagrams plans for more “community moderators” appear to be rumors and not realities.
IMAGE CREDIT: Images of Nazi book burning and Taliban/Islamic state Iconoclasm
Leah Schrager is an artist, and one of her projects, @OnaArtist is a sex worker with a massive following on Instagram.. She is cis-sex-positive confident woman pushing the boundaries of contemporary art. Her work is an example of how even a hyper popular cis-sexy-models is effected by Instagram’s censorship policies.
In 2015 Schrager developed an alter ego who embraced objectification, a cam-girl named OnaArtist. This persona quickly became an Instagram star with over 3 million followers. According to Schrager the project “was meant to be an exploration of what mainstream and self-made celebrity are… …as soon as a woman posts a photo that can be interpreted as sexual, then it is not art” (Interview With ArtNet News)
Schrager is pushing “the boundaries between sex work and the artists who sell postmodern self-objectification and creative intimacy. Ona nimbly straddles lines between aesthetic and sexual arousal. Her feed is a constantly creative and arousing blend of artful angles, witty captions, seductive expressions, and tantalizing near-nudity.” (ArtNews Article by Ana Finel Honigmans) Schrager’s work is a digital revamp of the traditional burlesque show.
In 2020 Schrager announced that OnaArtist is retiring. Her project, intended to open the art world to the idea that contemporary art could also be sexy.
In July of 2018, Donald Trump signed FOSTA-SESTA, a controversial law enabling authorities to pursue websites that host sex trafficking ads.
Schrager does not consider OnaArtist to be a mainstream celebrity. Even with 3 million followers Schrager feels the paranoia of posting her true voice. Her cam-girl project walks a thin line between sex-work and art. Her category of cis-sexy-model is under-protected and under attack. “These models and Instagram models (who have a mostly male audience) are not covered in the mainstream and are also highly censored on Instagram. OnaArtist has been Shadow Banned for over a year (this started around the time of SESTA/FOSTA) and is in constant fear of being deleted by Instagram. Photos of hers are randomly deleted and she has no recourse. “ Schrager repeats the words of Betty Tompkins claiming the essential problem is that Instagram doesn’t play by their own rules.
It is interesting to note the highly sexualized images here are all from OnaArtist’s current Instagram feed. Similar posts from other artists are deleted.
IMAGE CREDIT: Leah Schrager, OnaArtist - 2015-2020, Images Courtesy The Artist, Leah Schrager
In 2016 Tiffany Saint Bunny founded an Instagram art project dedicated to making trucks gay. TruckSlutsMag has grown to over 48,000 Instagram followers and Bunny is joined by Rachel Saxer and Spencer Faust in running the account. The site documents and chronicles primarily scantily clad women and non-gender conforming people with trucks. These gritty photos are anything but your typical male gaze truck fantasy.
Bunny’s goals are to create a lasting visual archive of her radical queer and trans freak family. In this way TruckSlutsMag is an aggressive response to homophobia and the white supremacist / nationalistic messaging of American truck lovers. Images from the project have been attacked on Instagram, both in hateful comments and by their removal from the platform. This past October saw a large group of posts removed from @TruckSlutsMag. At one point this fully clothed self portrait of Bunny from behind was taken down.
These erasures are an attack on queer, trans, and alt / non-conforming community archives. Bunny has spoken to members of the Queer/Trans community who had their accounts taken down, only to realize they no longer have backups of old photos. These communities are already under attack in our country and now literally being erased from social media.
To Bunny, this digital erasure harkens back to the AIDS crisis. “When queer and trans people die, their histories and memories are often erased from the record by homophobic family members tasked with collecting the affects of the deceased. For the surviving family members, a death was often seen as an opportunity to sanitize the image of the deceased, and the AIDS crisis gave hundreds of thousands of opportunities to do just that. With very little effort, a person’s entire intimate history-- a lifetime of love, pleasure and self-actualization-- was scrubbed from the face of the earth.” - Tiffany Saint Bunny
IMAGE CREDIT: All images courtesy the artist, Tiffany Saint Bunny.
Five years ago I sat in on one of Danny Nicoletta’s private screenings of Stu Maddux’s “Reel in the Closet.” This film collected home movies from the past century, as well as unseen news footage, interviews, etc. and crafted a cohesive narrative about the importance of creating and preserving the queer archive. A major sticking point was that when queer and trans people die, their histories and memories are often erased from the record by homophobic family members tasked with collecting the affects of the deceased. For the surviving family members, a death was often seen as an opportunity to sanitize the image of the deceased, and the AIDS crisis gave hundreds of thousands of opportunities to do just that. With very little effort, a person’s entire intimate history-- a lifetime of love, pleasure and self-actualization-- was scrubbed from the face of the earth.
How much of our history is lost every time this happens? How certain is our future when we are denied our history?
For queer and trans people, the knowledge that people before you have felt queer love, trans joy, or gay pleasure is fundamental to our existence. Access to our historical archive helps us believe in the dream of an ecstatic future-- it fills us with pride when we look back and it can determine the way we live our present lives. Who are we, if not a generation of homosexuals and transsexuals borne from the previous one? Who will come after us, and what will we leave them? What stories will we get to tell and will they be the ones we want to tell?
(Images Sourced From @TruckSlutsMag)
At the dawn of the new millennia the way we captured and retained memories changed forever. Affordable digital cameras (and later, smart phones) plus the proliferation of social media platforms meant that we, as a people, stopped cataloguing our lives using analogue devices. Therefore, we stopped retaining physical ownership and control over our histories. For the sake of digital community and convenience, we gave the sole records of our most intimate moments to black box megacorporations who have, in the name of “COMMUNITY GUIDELINES,” erased them without warning or explanation.
Perhaps most insulting, these erasures predominantly affect communities that are already denied their ability to write their own histories-- those that have survived centuries of state-sponsored oppression and terror. They are not afforded power, nor agency, and the destruction of these archives amounts to a campaign of dehumanization by erasing their place in the human narrative. This is a whitewashing of history, a straightwashing of history, a thinwashing of history. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, a visual erasure paves the way for “outlier” communities to be removed from society at large, with little fanfare. If consensual visibility is power, then nonconsensual invisibility is a state of profound weakness and impotence.
We have become prostrate, lying in submission to social media corporations. We gave them the keys to our histories and our memories, allowing them to shape what is and what isn’t, and it is an exceedingly precarious place to be situated. It has become sadly commonplace to hear of someone that has lost all of their photos,videos, and writings because an account was removed due to some nebulous violation. Our state of being is almost purely ephemeral at this point, and much like digital ghosts, we’re but a few keystrokes away from non-existence.
(Image Courtesy The Artist, Tiffany Saint Bunny
Increasingly, life as an artist in the 21st century means you need to be on Instagram, promoting your work, engaging with fans and potential collectors, and building that all-important follower count. But society’s growing reliance on this visual social media platform presents challenges for artists whose work doesn’t meet Instagram’s community guidelines.
Curator Jac Lahav has witnessed the struggles that these artists have trying to conform to Instagram’s rules—moderators delete posts and erase accounts, even when the content appears to match the letter of the law, which permits nudity in painting and sculpture.
“Instagram’s policies seem to be a moving target,” says Lahav. “They seem to be changing all the time and not be consistent.”
As the art world was forced to relocate online in response to the global health crisis, Lahav was inspired to create a virtual exhibition responding to Instagram’s art censorship for 42 Social Club, the project space he runs with wife Nora Leech at their home in Lyme, Connecticut.
“Instagram’s Shadow” offers a fascinating overview of some of the many ways that artists have run afoul of Instagram overlords. Censorship strikes in many ways, but its effects are always negative for artists.
The 17 artists in the show range from celebrated feminist painter Betty Tompkins, who has faced reprobation for decades for her sexually explicit “Fuck Paintings,” as well as recent Instagram censorship, to emerging figures like Shona McAndrew, who features plus-sized nude women in her paintings and sculptures, and Micole Hebron, who pointedly targets the double standard over male nipples—allowed—and female nipples—considered sexually explicit—by creating male nipple censor shields to render women’s nipple acceptable for the app.
Instagram’s puritanical approach to nudity in art undoubtedly perpetuates the sexualization of the female body. It is also limiting artistic expression.
Artists are unable to post their real work on Instagram, the place where they are most likely to expand their reach. That proved problematic for Sara Jimenez, who received an offer to participate in a government-sponsored exhibition from someone who spotted her on Instagram. Her self censorship has kept her from attracting unwelcome attention from Instagram, but it also meant that the curator didn’t fully understand that Jimenez incorporates full-body nudity in her digitally manipulated photography, making it difficult for her to meet the expectations of the conservative community hosting the show.
And the issue goes beyond body politics. Kumasi Barnett, whose “Amazing Black Man” works were one of the highlights of the Armory Show—the last major US art event before the pandemic sent the country into lockdown—transforms familiar superheroes into more complicated black figures by altering the covers of original Marvel comic books. But in addition to outfitting his protagonists in hoodies in jeans, instead of spandex suits, Barnett also reclaims racist slurs.
Ahead of his big Armory Show moment, Barnett actually was targeted by an Instagram ad suggesting he promote his work on the app. But when he attempted to pay for the advertising opportunity, Instagram informed the artist that his use of racial slurs was a violation of community guidelines—even though the art hopes to engage viewers in a dialogue about the negative implications of racial stereotypes and offensive, outdated language.
The show’s title, “Instagram’s Shadow,” is a nod to Instagram’s practice of “shadow banning” users and content that technically avoids violating community guidelines, but which app monitors still deem sexually suggestive. That means that certain posts won’t show up when searching on the explore page.
Instagram refuses to acknowledge the term “shadow ban,” but does admit that it restricts potentially “inappropriate” imagery in search results. When that happens, it prevents artists from reaching new audiences. These nebulous, poorly defined restrictions can be enforced differently at different times and for different users—a celebrity’s racy, barely-censored photographs can rack up tens of thousands of likes, while a similarly risqué post from an artist gets taken offline.
And the stakes are even higher for already-marginalized groups who rely on social media to share their stories with a wider audience, such as the LGBTQ community.
Tiffany Saint Bunny’s Instagram art project @TruckSlutsMag is dedicated to countering stereotypes of the all-American alpha male truck owner, often tinged with white supremacy, with images of queer and non-gendering conforming people with trucks. But Bunny has repeatedly seen her posts removed from Instagram, even when her subjects are fully clothed. And when @TruckSlutsMag community members have had their accounts deleted, they have lost entire archives of queer imagery.
For some, Instagram is the only platform where it is possible to connect with the general public. But that platform is constantly under threat of censorship—or worse, deletion.
“The key words,” says Lahav, “are fear and anxiety.”
SUPPORT THIS PROJECT
FIGHT AGAINST THE MACHINE
If you have been censored on social media or had your account banned on Instagram/Facebook, contact Joanne Leah. She is collecting stories at Artists Against Social Media Censorship. The more visibility these stories get, the more things will change!
Holding an open call for this show we heard from so many amazing artists who have had their work scrutinized and censored by Instagram. Here are links to other artists who have been censored (if you would like to be included, send us a message).
The following is a list written by David Marsh on 50 Ways To Fight Censorship. We took the liberty of editing it for the 21th Century Social Media world:
1. SPEAK OUT!
2. Register and Vote!
3. Send Your Senators and Congressperson Letters or Emails.
4. Teach Your Children How to Know When Censorship Appears in the Classroom, or Elsewhere.
5. Oppose De Facto Censorship of the News Media And Social Media by the Wealthy and Powerful.
6. Get Involved With Your Library.
7. Post Art That Fights Censorship.
8. Speak Out About Freedom of Speech at Schools, Places of Worship, and to Youth Groups.
9. Create a Post on Social Media About Why Free Speech is Important.
10. Comment to Your Favorite Influencers About Censorship
11. Support Retailers, Artists, Users, Who Fight Against Censorship.
12. Read Banned Books. Read Everything About Censorship and First Amendment Issues.
13. Re-Post posts about censorship
14. Buy Banned Artwork.
15. Write and Perform Songs About Free Speech and the Perils of Censorship.
16. Write Social Media Employees Emails and Tell Them to Make better policies.
17. Watch and Like Controversial Content on Social Media.
18. Sign This Artists Against Social Media Censorship Petition.
19. Join the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
20. Join the Freedom to Read Foundation.
21. Stop the Attack on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
22. Join Article 19.
23. Support the American Booksellers Association Foundation for Free Expression.
24. Get to Know Censorship Groups. Study Their Literature, and Expose Them to Public Scrutiny.
25. Investigate the Tax-Exempt Status of Pro-Censorship Lobbying Groups.
26. Find Out Your State's Requirements for Purchasing Textbooks.
27. Run for Public Office On a Platform Supporting Freedom of Expression.
28. DM Your Favorite Artists; Find Out What They're Doing to Help Preserve Freedom of Expression.
29. Make an Anti-Censorship Livestream Showing the Various Benefits of Free Speech in Your Community
30. Post Your Positive Experiences with “degenerate” Art.
31. Become a Voter Registrar. Organize a Voter Registration Drive.
32. Form a Group That Establishes a First Amendment Litmus Test for Politicians.
33. Start an Anti-Censorship Petition Campaign.
34. Boycott Products Made and Marketed by Companies That Fund the Censors.
35. Start a Grassroots Anti-Censorship Facebook Page.
36. Start an Anti-Censorship Social Media Account.
37. Contact Local Arts and Educational Organizations; Persuade Them to Stage a Free Speech Events.
38. Set a Good Example by Starting a Parents Group to Combat Censorship.
39. Contact Local Movie Houses and Galleries and Propose a "Censored Films Festival."
40. Make a Flier For Your Community Gathering Places To Raise Awareness of Free Speech Issues.
41. Stage a Mock Trial on Censorship.
42. Sue the Bastards!
43. Create a Public Service Announcement to Be Aired on Digital Media.
44. Make Sure Your Local Schools Have a Course on Freedom of Speech.
45. Contact Others Concerned About Censorship--Use the Hashtags!
46. Talk to Teachers About What They're Doing to Ensure Free Speech.
47. Picket the Censors.
48. Have a Moment of Silence to Keep Speech Free.
49. Have a Speak Out Day.
50. Make the Real Obscenities the Real Issues.
Or send us a message with your suggestions on how to fight censorship!
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