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With its instant accessibility, Instagram is revolutionising art and empowering the sisterhood. Alexandra English nominates the standout women artists to add to your feed now

It’s been months since the fall of Harvey Weinstein, and while La La Land still reverberates with cries of “Me Too” and “Time’s Up”, Instagram is being flooded with messages of solidarity.This is a women’s movement for the digital age. It’s no surprise, then, that all this vibrant feminine energy is electrifying the art world; so alive it’s as if someone’s dropped a hairdryer in the tub.While representation of women in major galleries is still shockingly low (it’s estimated only a third of the artwork showing in Australian state museums and galleries is by women), Instagram gives female artists a chance to find viewers beyond the white walls. The platform’s ability to simultaneously promote both artists and social issues means one thing: a strong dose of female-empowered art and messaging delivered right to your screen.Whole accounts are now dedicated to sharing work from the contemporary sisterhood, from The Ladies Network, an Australian collective started by Lara Vrkic, to LA group #Girlgaze, founded by photographer and television presenter Amanda de Cadenet.

“There’s a movement happening — it’s global!” Sydney-based painter Hannah Carrick exclaims. First of all, there’s the conquering of censorship (aka #FreeTheNipple). Instagram’s virally protested ban on the all-too-human female nipple doesn’t extend to drawn, sculpted or painted nips (photos of post-mastectomy scarring and breastfeeding are allowed), and Carrick has taken full advantage of this on her account (@hannahcarrick___) with her awesomely colourful paintings of African women often clad in scarcely anything but brightly coloured jewellery. Follow Carrick and you can expect impressive work-in-progress shots (check out her painting uniform — not a drop!) and updates on commissions.“The women I paint represent strength and beauty,”Carrick says of her striking figures,“but I wasn’t painting them for any other reason. My brother was the one who said,‘You’re doing this at a good time with the women’s movement.’ I love that my work can portray the sisterhood.”

Of course, the sisterhood is nothing new. Behind every great social change there’s a band of women refusing to back down. Where once women were barred from art classes and even walking around galleries without a chaperone lest their purity be sullied by a glimpse of human skin, thanks to the resistance of her foremothers, Sydney-based artist Aleta Lederwasch had the opposite introduction to art.“My dad did [life drawing] classes of an evening and would bring home all of his books and I was fascinated by the women in them,” she explains.

It’s satisfying to note that the revolution occurring on our phones is finding a place in the gallery. Clothilde Bullen, a Wardandi (Nyoongar) Aboriginal woman and curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, says social media has been a game changer. “Because of the Me Too movement, women feel like they’re allowed to stand up.There’s solidarity in a group response, and art is a reflection of what is

In 1995, when she was 11, “his instructor suggested I come along, and then I was hooked.” Lederwasch is interested in the lines of the female form, turning her model into a refined sketch and later adding colour. Her Instagram account (@aleta.lederwasch) is an intimate space; currently expecting her second child, Lederwasch meditates on her new baby by drawing a picture of the bub in utero every day. Her adult figures, though, have an Egon Schiele feel to them. “I’ve had people tell me that I should make my women more beautiful,” she says, “but I don’t want to do that. This person is showing you parts of themselves that you would never see. It’s intimate, and that process is what’s beautiful.”

If selfies are more your thing, head over to Polly Penrose’s account (@pollypenrosephotography), where she flips the idea on its head. The London-based photographer finds abandoned spaces, strips down, sets a 10-second timer and contorts her naked body into the kinds of shapes that will have you wondering why you ever quit childhood gymnastics. “We’re so used to seeing the nude woman as an alluring creature,” she explains over email. (I like to imagine she’s hanging from a lamppost as she types.) “My pictures are not necessarily about my body ... they are about the space — my body is a shape among other shapes.”

Speaking of shapes, there’s a Japanese photographer, known only as Zezn (@zezn), who takes self-portraits with a twist: both literal (her body) and figurative (she’s anonymous). “I’m exploring simplicity and strangeness,” she says. “An arm may look like a swan; fingertips may look like petals. Expression has no limit.” Her grid is a visual ballet of soft black-and- white images enhanced by the contrast between her snow-white skin and jet-black hair. Scroll through to access inner peace.

happening here and now, so I’d expect that would be relayed into whatever art is being made.There’s been this uprising, which is great, but not all women are created equal.

“Many Aboriginal artists concern them- selves with what it means to be a woman in their own culture. For them, [using Instagram is] almost like activism,” Bullen continues. “It’s about having some sort of political agency in a space where you can say, ‘I’m here. I’ve survived hundreds of years of colonisation and I’m still here.’” Karla Dickens, a Wiradjuri woman, is one such example. While her Instagram (@karla_dickens) is full of images of friends, her work is a devastating comment on the state of Indigenous affairs. At first glance, her Sleeping Beauty series (centre left) shows the female figure resting in a flowerbed. Dickens’s gallerist, Andrew Baker, explains that the works are actually a reaction to the rape and murder of Indigenous women, and that the painted figures are based on police forensic reports. Add Dickens to your feed for an injection of strong political art with a dash of (very) dark humour.

Another two artists worth an Instagram deep-dive are Laura Berger from Chicago (@_lauraberger_) and Anne Barlinckhoff (@annebarlinckhoff), a Dutch photographer who now resides between Amsterdam and Accra in Ghana. Berger’s paintings show naked women, painted in earthy tones, lifting and carrying each other. Her works are so Zen, it’s hard to imagine they came from a place of trauma. But Berger explains that in the space of a year, three family members — including her father — died, and she was later robbed at gunpoint. She uses Instagram to “energetically connect with other women”, so don’t hold back on those double taps. Aesthetically, Berger and Barlinckhoff have little in common apart from their love of the female form

If you use your feed as a source of sartorial inspiration, may we recommend Kelly Beeman?TheNewYork/LA-based artist (@kellymariebeeman) paints a literal sisterhood (she’s the third of four daughters) all fabulously dressed in the latest designer wear, with titles such as Sisters Fighting Over Dolce & Gabbana Dress and Resting at the Piano in Balenciaga Dress. Her works are compiled in the new book Window Shopping. “Having sisters has helped me relate to women,” she says. “It’s the strange combination of the internal world and the tension between [the figures] that I enjoy trying to capture.”

(Barlinckhoff’s photographs are raw, intense portraits of friendship and sexuality), but what connects them is the way they use Instagram to foster a sense of community. “I like thinking of tribes of women fully supporting each other, surrounding each other,” Berger explains.As for Barlinckhoff: “Growing up, I was deprived of love, so I’m creating a place where everyone is given a chance.”

And that’s the brilliance of Instagram: in a few flicks of the thumb you can access a whole spectrum of female art, make some friends and join the revolution. The nipple is one step closer to being freed.

This story originally appeared in the June/July 2018 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR.
Main image: Millfields Road, Curved Wall, 2015, by Polly Penrose.