Artist Conversation #5

Micol Hebron is a multi-media artist who also works in collaborative projects varying from curator projects to gender-awareness projects. Hebron mainly focuses on “non-fabricated object” pieces such as performances, videos, or digital and live media. One of her main goals/themes in her work is to express modern feminism and discuss the exploration of the human body among social media platforms and in modern society. She explained during the meeting that in her recent work on popular social media platforms, her goal is to challenge the platforms’ implications and standards on “what is acceptable” in society regarding censorship (specifically human body censorship and censorship that determines what is and isn’t art). Her works on social media specifically focus on experimenting with social media censorship of female nipples vs censorship of male nipples. 

Her work involving the discussion of female vs male body and how they are viewed differently among both social media platforms and in society mainly focus on human nipples. Hebron often explores this concept by taking pictures of her nipples and posting them on social media in order to see how fast her post will be taken down due to violation of “safety guidelines.” She stated that she would repost her pictures with various “censors” such as a blurred image on top of the nipple or a line covering her breasts. She explores different filters such as putting stickers over her nipples, covering them with her hands or with gloves, and even dramatically photoshopping more nipples to cover her own nipples. In addition, a lot of her works use bright colors and distinct patterns in the lines or shapes that she uses to “censor” her nipples. Hebron discovered that most social media platforms focus on taking down posts that explicitly show female nipples, and as long as they are covered or blurred, the post typically remains up. Her most “famous” way to create her photography pieces is to add male nipples over her own female nipples, either through photoshop or by using stickers/pasties.

A lot of the questions that were asked during the class period, consisted of “Why is she doing this kind of work?” and “Why does she feel that it is important?” Her main responses were that she feels the need to normalize the female body, because often it is discriminated against through double standards. She explains that male nipples are not banned on social media, and in society pictures of shirtless men are acceptable. Hebron explains that these platforms are also creating a sort of “wide-spread ideal” of what is acceptable and unacceptable in society. She continues to explain how these platforms basically create a standard and have the capability to decide what is and isn’t art through their “nudity” guidelines. In addition to protesting the norms society holds between female and male bodies, she sees value in expressing herself and expressing the human body through her work. One question that someone asked was “Why use these [social media] platforms if you can possibly create your own where you can post anything you want?” Again, this ties back to breaking the norms these big social-media platforms create. It makes it more of a protest if she uses those big platforms.

After watching and listening to Hebron during class, I immediately chose her as the artists I would write about in the “artist conversation” because her work really resonated with me. I agree that her work is very important to challenge the double standards that society imposes on humans (female vs male) and I really respect how she is actively challenging the social media algorithm. I never realized that social media specifically bans the sight of female nipples but allows male nipples, and I agree with her that these guidelines are very gender biased. One thing that she stated that really stuck with me was that the female body is almost always viewed in a sexual way, but the male body can be plastered everywhere shirtless and no one really cares. I feel that her work and goal of normalizing these gender double standards really ties down with how society views female vs male anatomy and I really respect that she is challenging this by posting pictures that experiment how the female body is censored. Moreover, it can reshape how human bodies are viewed and change how female body parts are over-sexualized even in artistic contexts.