Five Artists that You Should Follow on Instagram
It is undeniable that artists are now embracing Instagram to show their works to the world. They also use the platform to experiment in front of an instantly responsive audience.
Moreover, installation images garner the most likes. They are created by practitioners and artists who make site-specific, architectural, and immersive artworks that amass large following at a fast phase.
There is also no doubt that people are in love with the arts. For this reason, they look for the best artists to follow on social media.
If you are one of them, then here are five artists who are worth following on Instagram:
Yoriyas (@yoriyas)
Yoriyas’s real name is Yassine Alaoui Ismaili, but he uses Yoriyas with his works. He is a child of Casablanca. His colorful and conversational street photography shows a native son’s love for the Moroccan metropolis. It also exudes an instinct for movement, which reflects his background in break dancing and hip hop.
Also, Yoriyas has built the bubbling Moroccan photo scene. Not long ago, he curated the national photography museum’s inaugural exhibition in a resort fort located in Rabat. The exhibit is an excellent and adventurous showcase of 15 emerging artists. Yoriyas discovered some of them through social media.
Ever since lockdowns were implemented, Yoriyas has been helping in running through a weekly photography competition that is open to both amateurs and professionals. You can find the entries of the winning artists, as well as Yoriyas’s works on his Instagram feed.
Rahima Gambo (@rahrahhima and @awalkspace)
Rahima Gambo is an artist who often walks around after waking up. She gathers things such as branches, impressions, objects in the streets, and even conversations. She then takes these materials and uses them to make something. With these things, she comes up with intangible inputs that come through in the way that she sets up an installation. She also draws on the wall in forms of lines that feel improvised yet ancient and runic.
Gambo lost her interest in photojournalism after she had too many assignments that depict trauma in northeast Nigeria. Notably, the said country is her home region, where the Boko Haram conflict lasted for a decade.
For Gambo, her walk practice is an antidote that is attuned, grounded, and different documenting. She lives in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. There, she has opened shares space for artists. She also invites people to walk with her. Those are her ways of belonging together.
Moreover, Gambo offers outtakes from both walking, as well as the art that it generates on Instagram.
Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. (@kennedyprints & @pile_of_bricks)
Amos Kennedy had a time in his life where he sold $10 prints at the local Okra Festival in tiny Burkville, Ala. This self-described “humble Negro printer” quit the middle-class office life when he was 40 years old. He is also the legend in the letterpress world.
Kennedy undeniably has a large following when it comes to the American book arts and folkways. Besides, his prints scream messages. They speak history-minded, political, and playful despite their cosmopolitan and earthy feel, that refer, for instance, to social movements in other countries.
Moreover, Kennedy is now based in Detroit. There, he worked on antediluvian machinery and bought an old garage, which he calls the Pile of Bricks, to spread out, welcome, and teach visitors. He documents the project’s progress, as well as shares welcome whimsy from a practice that is devoted to craft and justice on Instagram.
Vanessa Bell (@cremedelacremeba)
Vanessa Bell is a half-Argentine, half-British artist. Even if you have not come to Buenos Aires yet, seeing her Instagram feed would make you feel as if you had an imperative journey to the capital of Argentina.
Moreover, Bell’s nationality is an insider-outsider position that she puts to fair use. She is the intellectually curious ambassador for Buenos Aires, as well as its design culture and history. That means buildings, especially the brutalist, Modernist, and Postmodern ones on Instagram. These are precisely what Argentina replates, along with many unclassified oddities.
Bell's obsessions, including high-design 1970s building intercoms, are contagious. Her captions are also very generous with architectural history and context.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, she consults and gives tours. However, now that the majority of countries in the world are on lockdown, she has been sharing her photos, as well as archival ones, from what is a massive collection.
Slavs and Tatars (@slavsandtatars)
Slavs and Tatars is a collective art whose members’ identities remain concealed. The members of this collective are described as living and working in Eurasia. Besides, they devote their exhibitions and projects like books and zines to the area called “east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China.
The arts of the Slavs and Tatars can be eccentric. Last year, they offered a pickle-juice bar during the Venice Biennale. In their bar, people can refresh themselves– if this is even the right term– with weird fermented beverages while you are enjoying your visit. While that does not sound so good to everyone, it was at its core an archive work, foregrounding local thought, mining history, and sparking collisions. If you are theory-minded, then there is a high chance that you will appreciate how it challenges Orientalist or imperial frames of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, you can dig the running ideas, images, and sources that Slavs and Tatars share on their Instagram feed.
Final Thoughts
Recently, Instagram has been a significant source of entertainment after photos of people remaking poses from famous paintings became trending. This platform is a home for the arts.
Date: September 9, 2020 / Categories: Interesting, / Author: Joy P
