Making the Feminist Intersectional Self Through Erotic Instagram Art

by: Marissa Willcox , November 10, 2025

Introduction

In this paper, I explore the role of intersectionality in feminist Instagram art through an in-depth digital ethnographic case study of two artists—Hana Shafi and Theo Grimes. Shafi (@frizzkidart), a queer Canadian of Muslim-Indian heritage, often draws intersectional experiences about her subjectivity but also includes other races, genders, and body types in her work. Grimes (@ggggrimes), a black, queer and non-binary artist living in Philadelphia, weaves their intersectional identity across artworks about people of colour, often in a state of ecstasy or embrace. The intersectionality of these artists’ experiences becomes a key feature in their illustrations of others and in their self-portraiture. The working definition of intersectionality I use in the paper is derived from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work (1989 & 1990), in which she outlines the layers of domination and subjugation that black women face, articulating how intersecting experiences of oppression can be understood as multiple and non-linear (1989 & 1990). Through a theoretical lens of eroticism and intersectionality, I trace the experiences of these artists and their work, arguing through my analysis that this is a way of practising intersectionality in social media spaces. While the first artist, Hana Shafi, sets the tone for the paper, the focus on the erotic self as an intersectional self is drawn from the second artist, Theo Grimes’ work.

Both these creators often use their art as a method of calling attention to current social movements related to race, cultural identity and gender. They both identify as intersectional feminists and artists, with illustration as their primary medium. However, their uses of Instagram, a tool for late-stage capitalism (Braidotti 2013 & 2019), to do such intersectional feminist work, underscores a paradoxical argument by Audre Lorde, which has been repeated and reworked by Legacy Russell:

The paradox of using platforms that grossly co-opt, sensationalise, and capitalise on POC, female-identifying, and queer bodies (and our pain) as a means of advancing urgent political or cultural dialogue about our struggle (in addition to our joys and our journeys) is one that remains impossible to ignore … However if we assume that Audre Lorde’s 1984 declaration that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’ still holds true, then perhaps what these institutions—both online and off—require is not dismantling but rather mutiny in the form of strategic occupation. (2020: 24-25)

If the oft-cited argument by Audre Lorde (1984: 2)—that ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’—indeed still holds true, then what Russell (2020: 25) and I are both interested in understanding is, what ‘mutiny in the form of strategic occupation’ actually looks like? With this in mind, I ask: How can intersectional artists strategically occupy digital and physical spaces to challenge and redefine oppressive narratives perpetuated by platforms and the public?

In my analysis, I look at the ways eroticism is used as a practice of intersectionality in some feminist art making. Through illustrations of race, gender, sexuality, and ability, drawings of the self can be seen as an everyday way of practising intersectional feminism. Both artists in this paper use self-portraiture to communicate experiences of intersectionality from both personal and political perspectives, calling for action and attention among their followers. These self-portraiture practices are only part of what is analysed here, as their representation of self is also seen in how they draw and write about others who embody a similar intersectional experience.

Methods

This paper draws on a four-year digital ethnographic study in which I interviewed ten feminist and queer Instagram artists, exploring how they created spaces of belonging for marginalised groups online. My case studies here draw from this larger project. They examine a collection of each artist’s relevant works, a written interview with Grimes, and two interviews with Shafi. Though in this paper I look primarily Grimes’ work, in another larger study (Willcox 2023), I deep dived into each of these case studies. For my analysis, I use a foundation of feminist theory but also analytical lenses like Audre Lorde’s ‘erotic as power’ to unpack and analyse the artist’s work in line with their intersectional feminist art practice and interview transcripts. I read Black feminist theory, such as Audre Lorde, in relation to Grimes’ art practice to deconstruct the layers of illustrations by exploring the motivations and feelings of the artist. As a White woman, I recognise my positionality in analysing a Black artist’s work about race, and allow the art making and the words of Black scholars to tell their own stories.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is used to understand the participants’ experiences of entangled subjectivities. However, as the theory of intersectionality has been popularised in feminist theory in recent years (Kanai 2021), I use it as an analytical tool to understand some of the art practices of the participants. In her article ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,’ Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989 & 1990), who is credited with coining the term ‘intersectionality,’ describes how women of colour navigate two negative frameworks of domination and, therefore, are subjected to various forms of discrimination and disadvantage due to their identities. She (1989 & 1990) notes that identities are multiple and dimensional; therefore, oppression is not linear nor equally divided among groups, and differences within groups exist as much as they do between them. The difference here is a key element to focus on when thinking of intersectionality, as Audre Lorde, like other Black feminist scholars, highlights how ‘an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self’ is a condition of ‘human blindness’ (1984: 33).

Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality has also been developed and extended by Sirma Bilge (2010; 2013 & 2014), Patricia Hill Collins (1998; 2002 & 2019) and other Black feminist scholars (e.g. Anzaldula 1987; Lorde 1984; hooks 1984) who are concerned with the effects of marginalisation from the intersecting oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, class and other social categories. At the same time, intersectionality is also a popularised term outside of academia, which brings its own challenges (Kanai 2020), but it allows a person to position themselves not only as a feminist, but also as navigating power relations around race, culture and identity. In the following section, I discuss how the theory of intersectionality is integrated into art practice, allowing it to be viewed as an intersectional feminist practice (Choo et al. 2010; Cho et al. 2013). I focus on intersectionality as an analytical theory here not only because the participants identify with the term, but also because it is a useful and accessible contemporary concept for people who identify as being situated across, between and within racialised, sexualised, gendered, ableist, and classist power relations.

Intersectionality as Practice

Intersectionality can be understood as a ‘practice’ by examining how intersectional politics or approaches are not always tied to the bodies that inhabit these experiences. Nash and Warin explain this through Kobena Mercer’s (1994) study of Black cultural politics, where he problematises visible identities:

He argues that the differences between identity and identification are key to these types of debates, as identification might allow us to understand how political actions and practices are not tied to particular identities. That is, the Black body is not necessarily the site of anti-racist politics, or female bodies the site of feminist politics or the gay body of queer politics. (Nash & Warin 2017: 82)

Mercer, along with Nash and Warin’s interpretations of intersectional politics and their occasional detachment from intersectional identities, demonstrates that practices of intersectionality can sometimes be at odds with the bodies that inhabit these experiences.

For example, being a multiply marginalised person who experiences an intersectional array of oppression does not always equate to the expression of an intersectionally activated politics. One way of outlining this, through the lens of someone who is multiply marginalised, is from the words of artist participant Shafi:

I think being intersectional is like an ongoing practice. And I try not to think of it as like, oh, you’re intersectional now, this is what you are now. It’s an ongoing practice. It’s something you have to keep doing. And, so I try my best to make sure that my art and that my critique and my understandings of it are always really intersectional, and I think that requires a lot of listening, it requires a lot of learning, it requires a lot of patience. And it also requires sort of admitting when you don’t know something. And admitting when an experience is something that—you have an experience and that you don’t know about, sometimes, it just comes down to acknowledging when an experience isn’t yours and that you’re just in a position of learning about it. (Shafi 2019)

In the above quote, Shafi maintains that intersectionality is an ongoing practice rather than an intrinsic quality of the individual. It is essential to question what this intersectional feminist art practice looks like in the context of Instagram artwork. This viewpoint is similar to discussions of postfeminist visibility by authors such as Rosalind Gill, who describes postfeminist discourse as emphasising personal choice and empowerment, framing gender roles as expressions of individual identity rather than social imposition (2007). Expanding on this, Rottenberg (2018) defines ‘neoliberal feminism’ as a depoliticized feminism that prioritizes self-care, independence, and success while neglecting structural inequalities and oppressions (2018). She argues that this logic allows women to feel empowered even within gendered, commodified forms of labour. As Gill mentions (2016), ‘of course celebrity statements about feminism or queer politics can be profoundly significant and have a huge cultural impact. However, I want to suggest that claiming a feminist identity—without specifying what that means in terms of some kind of politics—is problematic’ (Gill 2016: 619). With this view, postfeminist visibility becomes a means by which the media is inseparable from new forms of feminist production. The hypervisibility of postfeminist ideals about the body, identity, or feminist politics renders them less political, as feminism transforms into more of an individual and profitable performance.

Similar to Gill’s questioning of current media (over)productions of feminism and its styling as a fashionable identity rather than an activist, everyday political practice, I consider how the artists in this research experience intersecting oppressions. I also analyse how they might practice intersectionality in their art beyond visibility and representation. As intersectionality is woven into the discourses of ‘inclusivity’ and ‘diversity’ through its mediated circulation, the question posed by Kanai—’how to move from its characterisation as a framework based primarily on inclusion, and the recognition and acknowledgment of minoritized subjects, to disassembling existing centres of power’ (2020: 16)—persists. Disassembling existing centres of power is the practice I refer to when discussing how intersectionality can be considered not only what an artist might experience but also what an artist might practice.

In Choo and Ferree’s work on intersectionality as practice, they write that ‘we focus on intersectionality as defined in practice as an analytic interaction: a nonadditive process, transformative interactivity of effects’ (2010: 131). Shafi (Fig.1) provides an example of this:

 

Fig. 1. Shafi 2019, Instagram art. Image caption on Instagram: ‘Not today, patriarchy!!! It’s women’s day … Resisting misogyny is not a matter of opinion; it is literally a matter of life and death because misogyny kills. To be apathetic about this is to be complicit with violence. Always speak out against misogyny, always commit to intersectional feminist practice by acknowledging that race, class, ability, sexual orientation and more affect the way misogyny impacts some folks more than others. When politicians enact harmful legislation, expose them and rally against them. Today is a joyous day and also a celebratory day, but it is also a political, a radical day, a day of mourning and anger. It is not enough to wear feminist apparel or adopt feminist labels without also adopting feminist practice. Speak out. Get angry. Listen to those more marginalised than you. Take care of yourself and your community. Believe survivors. Organise. Innovate. Make radical art. Take up space. Be mindful of others. And stay loud!’ (Shafi 2019)

 

In the above image and caption (Fig. 1), Women’s Day is presented as a reminder to resist misogyny and to practice intersectional feminism. Shafi offers practical suggestions, like exposing politicians who enact harmful legislation, and asks her followers to ‘Speak out. Get Angry. Listen to those more marginalised than you. Take care of yourself and your community’ (Shafi 2019). As calls to action, Shafi’s suggestions highlight that intersectional feminist practice is ongoing and requires radical mobilising and political engagement. This acknowledges that intersectional feminism for Shafi is indeed a practice, as it extends beyond diverse representation in her art into how she addresses, and acts on, the intersections of race in her everyday feminism. However, like Kanai (2020 & 2021), I take pause when considering concerns about the Whiteness still embedded within feminist art movements of the West, and in feminist community spaces in general. Hill Collins notes that ‘unequal power relations do not simply disappear within intersectional spaces but rather can reorganise themselves within those spaces’ (2019: 228). This relates to what Audre Lorde outlined nearly 40 years ago:

By and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class and age. This is a pretence to the homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist. (Lorde 1984: 106)

The efficacy of feminist movements is limited when they homogenise experiences. Daniels outlines how the dominance of White feminist concerns on social media marginalises the priorities and concerns of Women of Colour (2016). This racialised framework of feminism in the space I study suggests a similar finding to Kanai’s: ‘That the circulation of intersectionality via digital culture lent itself to an everyday take-up that was simultaneously abstract, universalised, as well as individualised for my White participants in particular’ (2021: 532). This is not to suggest that intersectionality lacks unifying potential when applied within feminist collectives, whether in digital or physical spaces. However, when intersectional experience becomes essentialized within digital contexts that prioritise metrics such as follows, likes, engagement, and profit as central to feminist art and content production, intersectionality risks being reduced to a mere buzzword. In such circumstances, the concept becomes detached from its foundational purpose: to serve as an analytical tool enabling multiply marginalised women to understand their experiences of oppression and to organise collectively against interconnected systems of discrimination and subjugation.

Eroticism as an Intersectional Feminist Art Practice

A discussion of race and the erotic would not be complete without referring to Jennifer C Nash’s 2014 work, The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography. Nash, who explores the pleasure of Blackness through porn, ‘traces how blackness can function as a lexicon of desire and a locus of eroticism for black pornographic protagonists’ (2014: 86). Nash’s analysis of pornographic films and other case studies within black visual culture challenges how sexual race plays for Black women is often perceived by non-Black spectators and scholars. She explains:

Far more than simply a locus of violent domination, gender is a space that confers a set of aesthetic, corporeal, and even erotic pleasures on its performer. Similarly, I treat blackness as a fraught, complex, and potentially exciting performance for black subjects, as a doing which can thrill, excite, and arouse, even as it wounds and terrorizes. In uncovering black female pornographic protagonists’ embodied race-pleasures, I am purposefully engaged in what Judith Butler terms an ‘aggressive counterreading,’ an intentional attempt to read strongly ‘against the grain’—against prevailing conceptions of racialization—in an attempt to engender theoretical and political space to imagine black subjects’ erotic attachments to blackness. (Nash 2014: 86)

This counterreading of blackness in porn for a Black feminist author, as something which can empower and can become ‘a strategy for naming one’s pleasures, longings, and desires’ (Nash 2014: 88), is one way of practising and reading intersectionality through the erotic. The erotic for Nash is read through race and playing with race, often through the dramatization of whiteness. I read the erotic as intersectional, by understanding race in the broader context of Nash’s view that race is a ‘pre-eminently socio-historical concept’ where ‘racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded’ (2014: 87). Therefore, in my analysis of Grimes’ work, I read intersectional art shared on Instagram as a practicemade visible by the erotic. Since my reading of race is inherently flawed and unequal as a White woman, the erotic becomes a mode of analysing racialised experiences in the artwork by participants in this research. My method of reading comes from the application of Black feminist theory to Grimes’ work to make sense of and articulate the ways they practice intersectional art and share this on Instagram.

Through the lens of Audre Lorde’s 1984 essay, ‘Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,’ I analyse Black, non-binary participant Grimes’ art. The essay traces the ways feminists have used, and can use, the erotic as a form of power by weaponising the very thing that is often used to oppress them. I theorise this use of the erotic as a method of intersectional feminist (art) practice.

 

Fig. 2. Grimes 2019, Instagram art.

 

Black, non-binary artist Theo Grimes (@gggrimes) states they are often not given as much visibility as White, cisgender feminists sharing visual art in Instagram spaces. This raises issues of racism that exist in Instagram; as Grimes makes plain, even in so-called intersectional spaces, narratives of social and cultural exclusion are upheld to police Black women or nonbinary people, making them feel ‘unseen and unheard’ (Grimes 2019). If people who experience varying layers of intersecting oppressions are not given equity of access or opportunity in the feminist spaces in which they work, this reiterates that intersectionality is not a finished process, as ‘far too much intersectional scholarship starts with the assumption that intersectionality is a finished framework that can simply be applied’ (Hill Collins & Bilge 2016: 32). Rather than locating the problem solely within platform infrastructure or algorithms, I argue that issues of gender, ability, race, and class that affect the visibility of creative works are fundamentally cultural and social. I therefore apply a lens of eroticism as a mode of interpreting intersectional art practices, since eroticism in art and social media content can work across social categories and transgress the boundaries that structure intersecting experiences of oppression.

For Grimes, making art is a practice of making belonging, specifically for people who identify as non-binary, trans, queer, fat, and those who are POC. Their main motivation in their work is to change the image and portrayal of queer people of colour in the media, as they ‘believe both gender and sex are completely tied to a White supremacist structure’ (Grimes 2019). They note that:

I have never seen a body like mine in media in a positive way … Because of that, I try to show more bodies that don’t get enough love or positivity. Hairy, long, short, fat, dark, disabled bodies are absolutely wonderful and exciting to paint. (Grimes 2019)

Drawing these intersecting and entangled identities is a way for Grimes to encourage people (followers, spectators, community members) to acknowledge their multiple and relational identities, and to make sure they aren’t ‘erased’:

Nothing is as black and white as we would like it to be or as we perceive. There are so many spectrums to everything and humans are multidimensional beings. And, furthermore, we all deserve to be seen in different ways. I don’t want my identities erased. I want you to acknowledge them and how they intersect and affect my life. Let’s respect each other while embracing our differences. It’s possible. (Grimes 2019)

Grimes uses eroticism to highlight the intersections of their and other people’s identities through self-portraiture and portraiture. With this method of erotic art making, they tie layers of identity together by demonstrating intersections of gender, race and sexuality through the subjects in their work having sex, feeling sexy, or through an erotic theme. Grimes’ art specifically uses the erotic as a method of bridging social and cultural differences across the entirety of their work. This, I argue, is one of Grimes’ key intersectional feminist practices. In the image above (Fig. 2), Grimes (2019) has drawn ‘a transmasc dyke enjoying a hookup.’ In this screenshot, we see a couple in which one person is admiring and about to kiss the other’s buttocks. However, the point of the image and the art is not necessarily about the sex act itself, as the caption under the image states:

Also I swear to god if yall ask me how you can be transmasc and a dyke!!!! Please leave your binary views out of my comments and DMs!! I don’t care if you see conflict in these labels just leave it outta my comments so you don’t invalidate people who aren’t you. From now on if I see comments questioning identity like this … I’m gonna block your binary ass. (Grimes 2019)

It becomes clear from reading this image and caption (Fig. 2) that Grimes’ aim is not necessarily to evoke sexual feelings of desire in their audience, but to highlight the sexuality of trans, Black, and queer people as being integral to their sense of selfhood. As they state, they will ‘block’ anyone who ‘invalidates’ their identity. As Lorde says, ‘the erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings’ (1984: 42). Using eroticism as a form of self-making in art is a feminist intersectional practice because it depicts relational identities. The image below is an example of this:

 

 

Fig. 3, Grimes 2019, Instagram art.

 

In this image (Fig. 3), Grimes has drawn a queer couple, a Latinx non-binary person with their Black girlfriend; there are sex toys and lubricant on the bed, and a sign that says ‘happiness is out there’ on the wall. This scenario, in which this couple has sex, speaks to some of the themes in our interview during which Grimes told me about their experiences coming to terms with their identities and fighting for happiness as an everyday practice amidst societal pressures to conform. In their work, there is a theme of hopefulness which emerges through pain:

I struggled with my gender identity for most of my life. I had no idea why I felt so sad when I started developing boobs and hips. The pain and distress I’ve felt from it is very real. And I want to validate people also experiencing these feelings, especially people of colour who aren’t seen as ideal men and women to begin with, because we aren’t White. We’re usually too x, y and z. I want to show them in sexy and non- fetishising ways (2019).

Using this art as a healing practice, Grimes includes little notes about happiness, love and positivity, either in the images or in the captions, which point to the struggles of coming to terms with their gender identity and the ways they ‘want people to know their love is nice and beautiful and pure even if they don’t love who society tells them to love’ (Grimes 2019). Grimes outlines this use of sex positivity and eroticism as a practice that speaks to intersecting experiences of oppression related to gender, sexuality, race, body type and more.

Eroticism, when used as a tool for communicating intersectional themes of race, sex and gender as a reclamation of sexuality and the body, is similar to themes that emerged in art made by second-wave feminists (Middleman 2018). Although I do not position this analysis within particular feminist waves due to the continuing overlapping of themes across the genealogy of feminist politics (Hewitt 2010), it is worth noting that the use of eroticism in art gained popularity in Western cultures in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Rachel Middleman credits a large part of radical eroticism to feminists of the 1960s and argues that ‘in the 1960s, women used avant-garde modes of artistic production to create sexually explicit works that revolutionized Western traditions of erotic art and the nude in advance of the feminist art movement of the 1970s’ (2018: 8). Middleman makes the important point that ‘women who articulated eroticism in their art bellied the naturalized assumptions that artists and intended audiences were heterosexual men and problematized the content of erotic imagery’ (2018: 9). As noted, eroticism in art can be challenging, as ‘artists [can] openly address the spectator as a libidinal subject through erotic art and engage the public in discourses of non-normative constructions of gender and sexuality by putting their artwork on display’ (2018: 9). While eroticism as a theme in feminist art is now generally less revolutionary or radical than in the erotic images of the 1960s, eroticism is still positioned as a mode of communicating about non-normative discourses in public spaces.

Going a few steps beyond Middleman’s research, my reading of Grimes’ artwork demonstrates a complex mix of eroticism and identity construction, and a way of ‘practicing’ feminist intersectionality. For example, they curate and create an erotic and hopeful theme that transcends narratives of Black bodies in the media focused on violence. This might be symbolic of what Geerts and van der Tuin consider ‘intersectionality-as interference’ (2013: 176), which interferes in and reconfigures identities. After Barad (2007) and Verloo (2009), Geerts and van der Tuin note that ‘by allowing for relations to be made and made differently, we no longer assume that a social category or a set of social categories has a decisive and uniform effect (essentialism)’ (2013: 176). Intersectional practice here (or a pattern of interference) makes the relation Grimes has with their race, gender and sexuality visible to the media public through art and text. In making this art, which is affirmative, sexy and yet emotional, Grimes challenges existing narratives around such identity categories by replacing existing narratives of violence with an image of intersectional eroticism.

The Erotic as Power & Humour

As much as I love showing black people with different expressions, I have no interest in showing us hurting so badly we’re on the verge of death. I have no interest in showing us getting shot, and I don’t want to show us bleeding either. We have plenty of that in the media. Our bodies are always brutalised and we’re seen as less human. I want to show us being expressive and sexual and validate a range of our emotions without people needing to pity us. (Grimes 2019)

By refusing to show Black people’s bodies being ‘brutalised’ in their work, Grimes makes material changes to the ways Black and queer bodies are represented in many mainstream media outlets. This demonstrates what Geertz and van der Tuin highlight in their analysis of intersectionality as a way of trying to ‘both unravel how power structures have co-constructed subjects through categorisation and to leave room for the analysis of the counteractions of marginalized subjects’ (2013: 175). The erotic images Grimes draws are, therefore, a way of showing a shift in power. In reclaiming their narrative as a Black, non-binary person through eroticism rather than victimisation, Grimes uses their art as an intersectional feminist practice, sometimes through self-portraiture but largely through illustrations of others. Lorde discusses this link between power and the feminist erotic as

an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves … For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. (Lorde 1984: 42-43)

Being in touch with the erotic requires a connection to feeling and a connection to self. There is a sense in this statement, and in Grimes’ art, that eroticism in art represents a kind of authenticity and connection to the self. In Grimes’ work, there is a rawness to the love and sex between trans, queer and non-binary people of colour. The erotic here has power not because it sparks sexual desire, but because it communicates a message about queer love, trans sexuality, and because it shows people of colour in loving and sexual relationships rather than in violent or victimised ways.

 

Fig. 4. Grimes 2019, Instagram art.

 

According to Lorde, eroticism and humour both hold a political and personal importance. Just as ‘our erotic knowledge empowers us’ (Lorde 1984: 45) by demonstrating a depth of fulfilment and desire, humour is a tool with which to speak truth to oppression through accessible means. However, Lorde also notes that the erotic has historically been used against women as an oppressive tool (she uses the term woman more generally, but I apply it to non-binary, trans and queer-identifying people as well). She says:

to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives. (Lorde 1984: 41)

One way of taking back eroticism for women as a form of power has been through humour. This has also been an intermingled theme in feminist art (Middleman 2018). Some images included here show how Grimes takes a humorous approach to the erotic. In Fig. 4 on the left, a Black trans person holds a pen like an erection (Grimes notes in the caption that this is based on their own likeness), in the image on the right of Fig. 4, Grimes has drawn someone getting aroused in public by thinking about their hot transfemme partner. Grimes’ diverse representations focus on questions of access and inclusion: specifically, which bodies and identities are permitted to engage in erotic expression within public spaces. Humour offers an approachable and accessible method of engaging viewers in the erotic. By drawing non-binary and Black people in humorous, playful ways, the artworks reclaim eroticism as a source of power. It is a feminist intersectional practice that situates the subject (Grimes) as embodied, material, relational and, indeed, powerful. Lorde exemplifies the importance of this point:

When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connections with our similarities and differences. To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd. (Lorde 1984: 47)

The erotic is a way of transcending difference and bringing together erotic and other everyday needs; sexual satisfaction is an important uniting and powerful force. Grimes gives an example of this:

There’s a lot of horrible tendencies in the trans community because of white supremacy and transmeds (people, usually trans men, who believe you need dysphoria to be trans and will harm people mentally or physically if they say they’re trans without dysphoria). It’s quite horrible and there are many reasons why. For example, transmasc folks might not be able to get top surgery. White trans men are the most palatable trans people, and I want something about that to change. So, I go out of my way to draw a trans woman showing her bulge having sex, or a trans man with his boobs hanging out. (Grimes 2019)

This action of drawing a trans woman having sex as a response to issues within the trans community that make some trans people more ‘palatable’ than others is an example of using eroticism to practice feminist intersectionality in art. In other words, sex and the performance of sexual intercourse transcend difference for Grimes, and they use this to intersect the multiplicities of race, gender, sexuality and feminism in their work. While sex cannot always be equated with the erotic and sex is not interchangeable with the erotic in my writing, I do connect Grimes’ depictions of ‘sex’ as a form of erotic art.

 

Fig. 5. Grimes 2019, Instagram art.

 

An example of the ways that the erotic can be a healing practice is shown in the caption from a painting (Fig. 5) that Grimes titled ‘Cat Girl.’ Grimes writes in the caption for this post, ‘I made so many beautiful paintings when living in a homeless shelter in East Harlem. Really proud of past me for channelling my feelings into hot art!’ (2019). Using their feelings about their life and channelling this into erotic art demonstrates the intersecting ways that sex and the erotic are used as a part of the making (and remaking) of the self in different spaces. As Lorde writes:

in touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial (Lorde 1984: 46).

For Grimes, making art while they were homeless represented a way of reclaiming power and controlling their narrative about class, race, gender, and sex. The erotic developed into a unique artistic style for Grimes, which became a powerful and sustaining practice, attracting followers who supported them financially, allowing them to find housing. Their creation of the intersectional self in art, presented on Instagram, was made visible and popularised through the erotic.

Conclusion

This paper demonstrates how Grimes uses the erotic in art as a practice of intersectional feminism, and how Shafi’s illustrations of selfhood and personal experience can try to mobilise an Instagram audience to practice intersectionality through voting, activism or fundraising. These two analyses, when combined, view race in feminist art making on Instagram as both materially constituted and relational (Dolphijn & van der Tuin 2013). The analyses that I have provided are contextually specific; however, as a White woman, I cannot comprehend the everyday affects that racism has on the body. Nonetheless, the words of people of colour in this paper powerfully express how race is part of self, and as a form of making the self and relating to others through art.

Through analysing Shafi and Grimes’ work, I demonstrate that intersectionality in their art extends beyond the diverse representation of race to include the material, everyday ways in which race and attention to race impact their lives. Race is examined in this paper through the lenses of the erotic and intersectionality as applied in art practice, demonstrating the complex intersections of the artist’s experience. The findings in this paper provide context for understanding the intersections between how bodies belong and don’t belong in the same context simultaneously (Black, non-binary, queer feminist artists like Grimes sometimes feel unseen in feminist art spaces). By leveraging Instagram as a platform, these artists address a critical need to explore how intersectionality can be actively practised and embodied in art in digital spaces. Through these case studies, I have presented a provocation for future feminist cultural analysts to analyse intersectionality as a practice and to view this practice as potentially transformative. As the feminist intersectional self is made visible by and through the erotic as an art practice, the erotic becomes the power with which to speak, read, and understand race, gender, sex and the body.