We all know about Instagram’s incessant upholding of ‘community guidelines’ in their suspending of accounts and deleting of images if a cheeky nipple is flashed. Instagram is a realm where patriarchy and hypocrisy reigns. For example, if a man posts a budgie-smuggler beach selfie baring nips galore, he remains unchallenged. The deeming of women’s bodies as inherently sexual and harmful to the ‘community’ is archaic and well out of step with our times.
To counter this male-centrality, meet five wonderful female erotic artists who stick two fingers up to the Instagram community guidelines in their work that celebrates sexuality and both female and male forms. Begging the question – why is it that it’s okay to paint pictures of naked ladies, while a real photograph of a real woman in a sexually uncompromising position is a damaging sight?
Helen Beard
If you’re familiar with the ‘when you see it’ memes, you’ll definitely have to crack a smile at Helen Beard’s work. While some of her vibrant, colour-block paintings clearly portray moments of sexual intimacy, some are far more ambiguous and require the viewer to really give the work a good looking at in order to find the tell-tale vulva or penis. Not only does Helen work in paint, but she also creates sculptures, collages and tapestries.
Her tapestries are especially interesting considering the erotic subject matter, as needlework is a craft that has long been associated with the subjection of women. She reinterprets this medium of ‘menial’ women’s work, traditionally used to quench the boredom housewives everywhere, and uses it to express individual sexual agency that is unapologetically female.
Tina Maria Elena
Self-taught artist Tina Maria Elena equally holds the female gaze as paramount in the articulation of her creative vision. She uses watercolours to recreate that delicate tactility that skin possesses, while also in a way that endows her work with a hazy sense of ethereality not unlike a steamy dream-scape. Of this, she stated that she “loves to combine colours with a strong definition of spaces which makes room for a dreamlike interpretation of lovemaking”.
Kitty Brophy
Our next artist, Kitty Brophy, is really badass. She always knew that she was going to be a model and an artist living in New York – and she did just that. Between walking on runways in Paris, she created her vision of surreal ink drawings. Her early work from 1978 recalls Egon Schiele in the use of elongated human forms and preoccupation with nudity. As the years progressed, she added poetry to her drawings, my favourite personal being this one from 2015:
Its not easy having being a vagina
Somedays it seems
Everyone wants to go in me
Or come out of me
Destroy me
Worship me
Denigrate me
Glorify me
It can be a burden
Though ive never wanted
Anything other
Just that power
Ability
Desire
To fuck you yeah fuck you
Over
It perfectly encapsulates what these other artists also address in their work. From 2016 to 2019, she renounced her sketchy line work for a more graphic approach that almost seems to be a satire of soviet propaganda posters in her exclusive use of red, black and white. She replaces fascist slogans with sexual imagery of powerfully domineering women, with a few men sprinkled in here and there.
Opashona Ghosh
Indian artist and illustrator Opashona Ghosh’s work speaks a graphic language that is very much in tune with ideas of contemporary femininity. Her personal projects centre on stylised female subjects, incorporating symbolic elements to tell tales on what it means to be female. Her ongoing All About my Mother project – alluding Almodovar’s iconic film Todo Sobre mi Made in his bold use of colour, and even bolder female characters –, Ghosh was inspired by the way the film explores femininity, strength in vulnerability and its delving into the queer mind. All aspects which clearly inform her work.
Regards Coupables
Regards Coupables is the erotic illustration account that is holding Instagram by the balls with 735K followers. The artist keeps their identity hidden, stating that they “feel like people will see something else if they truly know my identity”. So, though possibly not female, their approach to sexual imagery, although largely heterosexual, has the female sexual experience at the core. Starting first as an account to promote tattoo designs, Regards Couples (or ‘guilty pleasures’ in French) has expanded, producing merchandise, animations and even music to build their brand. They work solely in monochromatic and delicate line, tantalisingly leaving some parts of the images out so as to spark the consumer’s imagination.
These women have broken into the world of erotica, a realm that has for too long been a lame male members’ only club. Although there is still much work to be done concerning the dominion of the male gaze on not only art but society as a whole, these women stake a claim that yes, girls like sex too! And they’re not afraid to show it. Thus testament to the fact that women are not only the object of a man’s fantasy, as Instagram would like to uphold.