Rankin Creative: My feature in THE UNSEEN @Quantus
Hello everyone! Been a while since my last blog post, right?
Well, I am still pretty buzzing about what I am going to share with you all today. As you probably have seen from the title of this post - yes you are really reading this - I have been featured amongst the very best of creatives at the latest Rankin Creative Exhibition in London, Quantus gallery!
'THE UNSEEN' is an exhibition that focused on those creatives who were unfairly censored online, had their work taken down and even accounts deleted:
'Bringing together hundreds of experiences and images of unfairly censored work and people this exhibition of the project gives those who have been de-platformed the attention they deserve.
With exclusive portraits of 13 of the UNSEEN shot by Rankin himself and an interactive experience from MEDIA MONKS, this exhibition aims to start the conversation about equitable censorship and begins a series of events and pieces on the project from RANKIN CREATIVE.'
Do you remember, when at the beginning of this year I made the decision of registering a brand new Instagram account, even though I was fast approaching 16k followers on the original one? Although I had the incredible support from the community (and its exactly what got me through Covid as I have spent the first lockdown on my own), I was continuously getting warnings that my account will get deleted because somehow my old posts violated the new 'safety guidelines'; I was feeling totally targeted for no specific reason. If you have seen my work, I definitely would describe myself as a fashion, beauty, and a fantasy/editorial/conceptual model.
After several occasions where I appealed for the posts to be put back onto my feed but the requests got rejected, I accumulated a total of three posts that were flagged as 'violation of community guidelines'. This meant that if one more post taken down and my whole account gets deleted.
At that point, I really did not understand what was allowed to be shared and what wasn't. I have seen other creatives post stuff that I would definitely be done for (I don't judge everyone personally, I think everyone should be able to post whatever they want to) yet it seemed that my existence was way more offensive to Instagram.
I even remember sitting down and reading through every single sentence within the guidelines and apparently, a woman eating a banana could be seen as 'suggestive'. Really? Then I thought of doing my own little research and looked at the big brand accounts, like Playboy, to see if there is a woman eating a banana somewhere. And I found way 'worse' (as perceived by the social media platform, I reiterate), but miraculously the posts stayed up, and supposedly nothing was wrong with them.
Obviously, I was very disappointed by that point, I felt that this was very unfair. As a self-employed model and a creative that works on a much smaller scale than Playboy, I apparently didn't deserve a chance of sharing my work. Bizzare. I shared that very Playboy's post I am talking about on my story and wrote something along the lines: 'how is this allowed where my posts get constantly deleted?' And guess what, my story got taken down within seconds and I got my last warning 😅 Jokes.
So when I have seen that Rankin Creative is giving a platform where everyone can share the unfairly censored work, I knew I had to apply.
One of the photos that were taken down and never returned to my Instagram page was from a beauty shoot with Jamie Port, where he has gone all the lengths and made a disco ballgag prop himself. Just for a side note, this wasn't even a real thing as it didn't fasten around my head. THIS WASN'T EVEN ABOUT SEX. We were mainly exploring the idea of mixing concepts together and I was particularly proud of this one - so I thought it would make a perfect entry. This photo is still up on Jamie's page.
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| Photography Jamie Port MUA Marlena Studio Silkwood Studio Model, myself |
The exhibition was open for a week but unfortunately, it has coincided with my holidays, and was unable to attend. However the lovely team Opal and Luke have sent me the opening night photos and I have spotted my photo displayed twice, at the entrance and inside the main part. Can you spot it? Click on the images to see them fullscreen.
Digital Camera World:
Some pretty cool people attended, including Rankin himself, Val Garland and Asia Werbel.
Read more about THE UNSEEN here, click on the name of the magazine to read a full article.
'THE UNSEEN project has already energised a community that has regularly been abandoned and ignored by technocratic social media sites.'
'RANKIN CREATIVE has launched an exhibition and website platform support those who have been unfairly censored on social media and open up the debate around the topic'
Peach:
'THE UNSEEN is specifically highlighting the breadth and severity of unfair censorship in a way that’s not been seen before. The statistics of those who have joined the community highlight the core reasons marginalised people feel they are being censored:
'THE UNSEEN is specifically highlighting the breadth and severity of unfair censorship in a way that’s not been seen before. The statistics of those who have joined the community highlight the core reasons marginalised people feel they are being censored:
- FEMALE BODY & SEXISM/MISOGYNY RELATED EXPERIENCES 29.6%
- EXPERIENCES OF HOMO/QUEERPHOBIA 10%
- POLITICALLY RELATED EXPERIENCES 7%
- FATPHOBIA/PLUS SIZE DISCRIMINATION 5%
- ABLEISM EXPERIENCES 4%
- RACISM EXPERIENCES 4%'
One last thank you to Rankin Creative and his team for accepting my work and providing such a cool opportunity to be seen by so many people.
Until the next time!
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