Toma este puñal.
Today I posted a self-portrait facing the ground while a single Nike Air Jordans 1 hovers menacingly over the top of my head, that in itself doesn’t sound like anything too controversial, however I decided to include a paragraph of an Alci Acosta song called “Amor Gitano” (Gypsy Love) and the paragraph which is a very raw display of Latin American tragic romanticism reads “Toma este puñal, ábreme las venas, quiero desangrarme hasta que me muera” which translates to something akin to “Take this knife, open my veins, I want to bleed until I die”. However tragic this line sounds, I decided to make this the title of my drawing for many reasons, the main reason being the fact that this simple paragraph holds a very graphic and powerful emotion that effectively pierces your heart, hearing the stoic voice of Acosta as he goes through this line in his song will make anyone feel something
Coloring Outside the Lines: Defying Instagram's Censorship Through Moderation
As an immigrant artist whose practice and journey does not align with what galleries often look for, Instagram allowed me to have the opportunity to share my artwork with a wider audience, and build a following for my art, it allowed me the ability to reach far beyond my current location and be available to find for art enthusiasts from places that I would never even dream of reaching without it, it gave me a second chance at making art, 4 years ago I was ready to sell all of my art tools, dispose of all of my earlier artwork and focus on my full-time job outside of art, and forget about it, but I was able to use instagram to connect to other artists, be part of a community and find the confidence and support I needed to start building my artistic practice, and was able to successfully build and maintain a moderately successful account.
Yesterday, as I posted a piece of art I made that depicted the partially naked buttocks of a model I often collaborate with, that was beginning to gain traction, I got almost immediately flagged by the moderation tool, and I was placed in what people call “A shadowban” Instagram informed me that my content could not be shared with people that doesn’t follow me, the part they don’t say is that apart from this punishment, they also throttle down the reach that you can get even to accounts that follow you, and that when people search for your name, your account handle will not be suggested unless they type the entire handle in the search bar.