Editor’s note: This story was originally written by author Chloe Olewitz and published on Playboy.com in 2019.
It’s all in the scroll: From shocking line drawings to delicate watercolors and full-frontal nudity to suggestive sensuality, erotic art is ubiquitous on Instagram. There’s something for everyone, but much of the art shares a common thread: Its creator is anonymous.
Art historian Amalia Russiello says anonymity has served to protect artists from harsh repercussions throughout history. Artists in all eras have suffered physical violence, imprisonment or ostracism for crossing accepted social boundaries. “[Punishments] didn’t just depend on the historical period, but also on the country and political situation,” says Russiello, who also creates erotic art.Many artists still use anonymity to protect themselves, working under pseudonyms or invented identities. But even for artists who are safe from political persecution, anonymity has other benefits. Some artists use anonymity or pseudonyms to separate their professional reputations from their more risqué explorations. Russiello herself creates erotic art under the moniker Madame Dabi. “When one chooses to eliminate his or her name by choice, an enigma is created,” Russiello says. “The illustration is charged with mystery, giving the observer’s imagination the task of explaining the message independently of the image of the artist.”
Other artists commit completely to their pseudonyms, obscuring any connection between lived identity and fabricated persona. Flowsofly, an Austrian artist who uses they/them pronouns as part of their mask of anonymity, says they first took to Instagram in 2015 as part of a personal challenge to post one sensual line drawing every day. Flowsofly wanted the freedom to play with their new style separate from their professional design career, and anonymity made that possible. Their anonymous account became so successful that in May 2020, they quit their day job to work as a full-time artist. Flowsofly has maintained anonymity, even after gaining traction and going full-time, because it helps them keep the focus on the art rather than their personal identity. Viewers often spend a lot of energy seeking to understand an artist in order to better appreciate their work. In an effort to break such associations, Flowsofly erases their identity and creates work from a range of gender perspectives, instead of centering their own gaze. They also want to encourage viewers to use their imagination to step inside the scenes. “Having an anonymous account helps people put their own interpretations into the foreground, instead of trying to interpret what they see through the artist’s eye,” Flowsofly says. “It’s encouraging to watch two people standing in front of the same piece, seeing something different.”
For other artists, the mask of anonymity serves primarily as a source of courage. Mallard, who says she hopes her mom doesn’t find out about her erotic art, feels emboldened by her anonymity. It liberates her to take risks and challenge her own boundaries, because the only fallout she worries about is losing followers or dealing with aggressive comments from strangers. “Without anonymity I wouldn’t draw half the things I do,” she says. “There are no real-life repercussions. It’s true expression and freedom.”
Freedom of expression can come at a higher price for non-pseudonymous artists like Kristen Liu-Wong. Liu-Wong, who makes erotic art using her legal name, has noticed firsthand the effect of being transparent with her identity. “A lot of people put their personal baggage on you and your work,” she says. “As a woman, that can quickly dissolve into unwanted advances and nasty comments. If I were an anonymous, genderless artist, I would probably get taken advantage of a lot less and I would personally feel emboldened to ask for more.”
Although anonymity can protect and embolden creators, there are also downsides—especially online. It can be difficult to turn digital popularity into real-world opportunity when you’re committed to remaining anonymous, a lesson Flowsofly has learned the hard way. “I’ve been invited to events and to do live drawing sessions. I think they would have been really fun, and they could have helped show my works to the world,” they say. “But I declined. I didn’t want to give up my anonymity.”
For artist La Moufette, that dilemma was compounded by the question of ownership. When he started his first erotic art account on Instagram in 2015, there wasn’t anything out there that resembled his work. He racked up thousands of followers seemingly overnight, but it didn’t take long for copycats to start ripping off his work. They even reported La Moufette for “stealing” his own art. One of his copycats has been reposting La Moufette’s original art for at least two years, but the real La Moufette can’t get the fake account deleted.
In addition to battling online art theft, La Moufette also faced a series of devastating account deletions. As his popularity grew, people started reporting his work. La Moufette says his drawings were suggestive but not explicit; Instagram deleted his whole account anyway. After bouncing back quickly with a second account, La Moufette discovered that many of his fans were sex workers and porn actors. When they shared his work, the discrimination they face daily on the platform trickled down to his account. It was deleted again, and then a third time.With each deletion, active direct-message conversations with potential art clients vanished. “That was the most disappointing thing,” he says. The account closures forced La Moufette to relinquish his anonymity. After starting over for a fourth time, he set his account to private, started posting less frequently and publicly linked to his Kai Suppel account, where he posts tattoo art under his given name.
In the course of reporting this article, the fourth La Moufette account was deleted. “I guess Instagram is no longer the place for it,” Suppel says. This is the constant struggle for anonymous erotic artists on Instagram. For example, Flowsofly’s account remains online and visible, but only to some; Playboy’s editorial team still can’t access their page.
Regards Coupables, a French artist who uses anonymity to eliminate assumptions about their identity based on their erotic illustrations, is no stranger to this pattern of censorship. Their account was deleted twice in three years. “I live in constant fear that it will happen again,” they say. “I’ve been looking for other platforms since I lost my first account, but I feel terribly dependent and bridled. Dependent because overnight everything can disappear, and bridled because the restrictions related to the conditions of use are very strict, especially when it comes to eroticism and nudity.”
Kristen Liu-Wong has also called out the stark double standard in Instagram’s opaque community guidelines. “I know people who have reported child pornography, and nothing happened,” she says. “But a fully censored post of mine”—Liu-Wong sometimes uses emoji to cover up for nudity she worries will get her work flagged—“can be removed twice without any consideration.”
Some anonymous artists take censorship in stride, treating it as a cost of doing business on Instagram. Flowsofly says that usually fewer than 10 of the more than 300 images they post each year get deleted, but they hold back more explicit works out of fear of losing the account and the connection it provides to so many fans around the world.
Many erotic artists feel stuck between a rock and a hard place with Instagram. Twitter doesn’t have the same visual focus, and Tumblr banned adult content in December 2018, alienating a huge community of artists and their fans. Artists are left with little recourse when it comes to theft and censorship, but they feel tied to Instagram nonetheless. Regards Coupables says they have had four Instagram posts deleted in three weeks, but still haven’t found an alternative platform they feel is suitable. They still prioritize anonymity, even if it means shouldering more risk. “When it comes to sex, knowing the gender of the artist can change the interpretation of the work,” they say.
Other artists treat censorship as a matter of principle, seeing it as an attack on open and fluid representations of sexuality and sexual expression. Liu-Wong feels it’s her duty to speak out against censorship specifically because of her identity as a young woman in America. “In some ways, I feel obliged to mention every single time I am censored, instead of just quietly taking it like women have had to do throughout history,” she says. “I don’t have to do that, so I won’t.”
Anonymity presents a matrix of pros and cons that make the game seem impossible to win. To art historian Russiello, anonymity also has the potential to serve as a broader statement on the medium in which it appears and on the art world at large. “The absence of a name can be read as a criticism of the art market and the system of artistic trade,” she says. By erasing their identities and presenting their work on Instagram, anonymous erotic artists level a stinging commentary on the cult of personality and celebrity in the contemporary art world. If one of the core upshots of the Instagram era is that anyone can call themselves an artist, anonymous erotic artists prove that, when it comes to the art that really gets us going, the artist could be anyone.