How Instagram’s evolving affordances affect artists on the app.
While daydreaming out loud about what it would be like to have a career in art, one of my friends suggested, “you should consider creating an Instagram art page!” While their intention was to encourage me to put my art out there, all I could think about was the complexity that comes with navigating an app like Instagram as an artist.
Before the creation of TikTok in 2018, Instagram’s main function had always been the posting and sharing of still images. Sure, there was a stint where Instagram attempted to prioritize e-commerce on the app (we don’t talk about it), but since its inception in 2010, it was the social media site for posting images.
Things changed when TikTok and its short video content rose in popularity and other social media apps were pressured to create equivalents. For Instagram, that meant the birth of “Reels.”
The prominence of Reels on Instagram—not only as it shows up in users’ feeds but also with the inclusion of a Reels button at the bottom of the home page—changes the way users and creators interact with the app.
This emphasis on Reels and subsequent changes to the app’s affordances can be unsettling for artists who rely on social media for visibility. Artists who specialize in still image paintings or illustrations are forced to learn new forms of content creation such as recording their artistic process or developing skills in animation. Engaging with an audience who expects short and satisfying videos can be exhausting, not to mention acquiring the knowledge needed to navigate app algorithms.
But what is an artist if not someone with the capacity to adapt to a changing environment?
Take the Reel below as an example. By using both an art process video and a trending audio clip (I envy anyone who isn’t on borzoi TickTok), Dominique Ramsey, known as @euqinimodart on Instagram, enhances the art viewing process by relating her art back to popular culture and reaching an audience she may not have if she only posted a still image.
Creating engaging content like Ramsey’s on an app that evolves takes skill and understanding. Luckily, a market has arisen that addresses just that.
One Instagram influencer is using her social media fluency to empower other women and creators on the app. In her post responding to an update on Instagram that allows users to post photos with a 9:16 ratio, Alicia Noelle (@iamalicianoelle) suggests that the best way to have your content seen and engaged is to adjust your posts from the original square format to a portrait format. “By filling up the entire screen as people are scrolling, you are more likely to catch their attention,” Noelle writes.
While an artist’s talent should be the basis for their success, their visibility as a content creator may be dependant on their ability to adapt to app affordances. The existence of Noelle’s account speaks volumes about the impact app affordances can have on a creator and the skill required to be successful.
Other content creators, like illustrator Katie Mai (@bykatiemai on Instagram), are using their experience as prominent artists on social media to share tips and tricks they’ve developed along the way.
A large part of being a successful artist on a social media platform is understanding your audience. Mai suggests that, when making reels, engage with the type of content that you would like to create. This ensures you’re up-to-date with trends and makes your content more appealing to your target audience.
Mai notes, however, that if you don’t enjoy the Reel-making process, don’t pressure yourself to make that type of content! At the end of the day, creating art should bring more joy than stress.
For artists using social media as a means to reach local and global online audiences, change is inevitable. What remains to be answered is, will artists who refuse to adapt to Instagram’s continuous updates like Reels be left behind? And at what point will social media apps adapt to their content creators instead?
Bella Recca 
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