Essentially, Instagram is square, in more ways than one. Just ask Israeli artist @aviya.wyse, currently on her fourth Instagram account. Her stark, documentary-style photographs of bodies are apparently too triggering for the powers that be. With more than half a million followers, California artist @Alphachanneling has mostly managed to avoid the censors, who seem to approve of his psychedelic sexual imagery and odes to magical pussy. According to @Alphachanneling: “IG’s guidelines are vague and ambiguous, and often contradictory. Instagram is such a wonderful platform to connect people to art and ideas, and it’s unfortunate that it’s simultaneously such a threatening and insecure environment where artists are always at risk of having their accounts shut down. These communities of artists, curators, and art appreciators are like castles made of sand that can disappear overnight, entire histories of posts, comments, and discussions erased, just like that.”

Photo: Courtesy of @alphachanneling

But despite its #problematic puritanism, Instagram has democratized the distribution of art. While the erotic art we see in museums is almost exclusively made by white dudes (just last week, Sotheby’s in London auctioned 89 works of erotic art—made by 58 artists, only three of which were women). Instagram is a world where women can reclaim the pervasive tradition of the female nude. Instagram has unwittingly become a platform for artists around the globe, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, to share their visions of sex, love, and intimacy. And perhaps @Alphachanneling said it best: “Erotic art explores the entire spectrum of our human condition through the lens of desire. Social media makes possible a wider diversity of this erotic expression, as individuals now have more of a platform to broadcast their unique and authentic voices than ever before.”