These Artists Understand Everyday Girl Issues
Social media is often related with perfection. You see perfect people with perfect bodies, living a perfect life. You think that is boring? These artists feel you and help you keep it real like a best friend. Their works on social media visualize what a girl needs: Someone who tells you that it is absolutely fine to be real. After a break-up, they make you laugh again, if you feel stressed, they show you how to relax, even for all your other daily stress, they have one answer: Be and love yourself with all your imperfections.
Arvida Byström
If you love pink, glitter, and flowers, Arvida Byström is your girl. The young artist, born in 1991 in Stockholm, was part of the first generation who used Instagram as a medium not to create a perfect image of herself as a modeling beauty, but rather as “a little window out of a very closed room of teenage depression,” she says. She shamelessly shows off orange–peel skin, while posing in sexy underwear. With her fine sense for the right amount of girlishness and female power, she encourages people of all gender, and proves that behind every scar on our body, there is a story worth telling.
Sanam Khatibi
Imagine life thousands of years ago, no technology, not even laws and social norms. Sanam Khatibi takes us into a world in which humans are impelled by primal impulses, being animalistic and fierce. Her paintings are of intriguing, exotic landscapes reminiscent of Henri Rousseau’s jungle scenes. Naked pale female hunters bathing with snakes and riding on wild animals. Actually, a recurring motif in art – the hunter playing with its prey, wouldn’t it be the other way around. The artist questions our relationship with male-female power structures and appeals us to rethink the “natural superiority” of men, picturing the bestiality which lies dormant in every female soul waiting to break out.
Tara Booth
Calm down, you are not the only girl who does not know how to pee in a romper. The comic book artist Tara Booth visualizes the bigger and smaller problems of a woman’s daily life. Looking at her highly detailed sketches feels like going through the diary of her alter-ego, with all her ups and downs. “My work is about living with chronic anxiety and depression. It can be therapeutic to see how many people deal with the same issues and have similar experiences.” Her impeccable intuition expresses feelings through body language, which declares that being a little jerky never killed anybody.
Amber Vittoria
Shaved or not shaved? These days, this decision can make a statement. The fashion industry and advertising makes us think that the skin of a woman has to be smooth as silk surrounding a perfect body shaped like an hourglass. Amber Vittoria breaks down these boundaries of traditional femininity in her own peaceful and humorous way. Her figures resembling primitive art featuring strange creatures with hairy bodies, wearing Gucci T-Shirts have become her trademark, and to us, it feels like Amber wants to convince us that fashion is not conventional. So it’s no wonder, that clients like Man Repeller and The New York Times love her work!
Monica Kim Garza
Sitting in the office on a rainy fall day, the art of Monica Kim Garza is the better alternative to the pictures of a supermodel’s Instagram account, with skinny girls riding pink flamingos in a pool in Mykonos. The artist, whose art is influenced by her Korean and Mexican roots, paints women surfing, stretching, and – one of her recurrent topics – in total relaxation. What feels better than enjoying some beautiful food in bed after a long day at the beach? The pieces radiate the zest for life, showing curvy, brown skinned, self-confident women who show us the high value of self-care.
Alejandra Hernández
The life paintings of Colombia-born artist Alejandra Hernández seem like glimpses into the private space of the artist’s friends – all of us can identify with at least one of them. With a love for vibrant colors and details, she captures the “small world” of the portrayed persons, highlighting its uniqueness and preserving the intimacy of the moment. You can almost feel the familiarity between the subject and the artist. By adding some little “clues” in her work, she blurs the lines between fantasy and reality and makes us draw our own conclusions about the people and their current situation in her art.
All images via Instagram
Writer KATHRIN RETTIG
This feature got published in TheArtGorgeous magazine#3. Download e-version here
