Carlos Fentanes

I was invited to a Erotica themed Art Show in Western Canada, I was very excited, it’s a show that will be held in three different venues at Victoria BC, North Vancouver BC and Calgary AB it’s called A Hot Minute.
I was so excited that I tried to post some of my artworks for the show on Social Media, on X everything goes well but Instagram and Tiktok was impossible, my posts were erased and I received a warning about sexual content in my post, of course there’s sexual content it’s about an Erotic Art Show, what do you expect? Disney?

There is this argument, I think a little naïve, that if it’s Art then it’s not pornography, and a lot of colleagues complain a lot about it: This is Art, it’s not pornography, why are you censoring me?

Why do we keep repeating the idea that Art cannot be pornography? Why do we keep in denial about producing pornography?

What is pornography anyway? and why Century 21^st Western culture is keeping considering the body and the sexual act as taboo?

According to Merriam-Webster, Pornography is the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement.
OK, now we are talking or at least we have a starting point. According to this definition we can imply that a nude cannot be considered pornography unless it depicts erotic behavior or causes sexual excitement and then that’s why some artists consider that their work is not pornographic, it’s harmless and innocent.

One thing it’s clear for me, I’m not guilty of causing sexual excitement with my work, I’m not a professional pornographer, I mean in the sense as Playboy or Hustler are doing it for years, I’m not intending to do that, but I like to paint nudes and that’s a problem. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not consciously making art that causes sexual excitement but in the mind of the viewer there’s an internal dialog that is out of my control. Do I have to stop making my art because a viewer can see it as pornographic and causes him(her) sexual excitement?  That’s ridiculous.  

So, painting nudes is not the problem per se, but causing sexual excitement is and here it’s where the road forks with no clear signal of where to go so social media such as Instagram or Tiktok decided to cut here and treat everything the same way,  even a nipple can cause the suspension of your account, my blurred paintings in the background had causing a removal of my content, is that pornography or is intended to cause sexual excitement, I’m sure the answer is no, and I think Instagram and Tiktok knows that but it’s not that simple to filter images when you have literally millions of photos uploaded every hour.

Anyway, if they think I’m a pornographer so be it but I’m not going to stop making art, making my art. So here’s how I’m trying to avoid censorship: you will find in my website a page for Erotic Art, uncensored so if you are bold and curious please visit it and don’t worry if Instagram think is pornography, it doesn’t hurt.