Wk 14 – Artist Conversation #5 – Micol Hebron

Artist: Micol Hebron

Instagram: @Unicornkiller1

Due to the Corona Virus outbreak, we, unfortunately, were not allowed to visit an art exhibition, but rather met an artist during one of our zoom meetings called Micol Hebron. She is an artist located in Southern California. When I first logged onto the meeting, I noticed how positive and outspoken Micol was. I was able to pick up an “activist” sense, meaning I felt as if Micol was very passionate about social justice and fighting norms. As I guessed, she is all about empowering women and their bodies. Hebron even has a “feminists hiking club” where she invites any feminist identifying people to join her on hikes where she shows them her favorite trails. Along with this, she runs an annual video art festival to showcase and promote female-identifying people’s art since she felt as if she was not seeing enough female representation in the video-art world.

Micol explains how she loves art  because she believes it’s “a really fun way to navigate new knowledge about the world.” When Hebron began to describe her art, she explained how she does not follow one specific form of art, stating, “My artistic practice doesn’t take the form that’s recognizable in any one particular media.” Hebron uses different things to express themselves, mostly by photographs. She incorporates her body into her art and shares messages through human bodies.

Hebron is essentially using her art to spread her ideas about empowerment. She, unfortunately, endured plenty of abuse, both sexual and psychical all throughout the majority of her life. It’s exactly for reasons like this that her art is trying to empower female bodies. Along with this, her idea is a direct form of combating the censorship we all around us. We live in a world where the male body is accepted by society. Men are allowed to walk shirtless without being judged, however, a women’s upper body has been sexualized by society and shames any woman that wishes to obtain the same freedom as men. We see this largely happening on social media platforms which is exactly why Hebron combats this censorship by denying these rules of social media and tries to combat them. One of her artistic ways of doing so is by placing male nipples over her own nipples to send a message to platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

I personally truly enjoyed our meeting with Micol Hebron. Hearing her entire story was so inspiring and motivating. I share similar ideas as she does and I have a high interest in the messages she incorporates into her art. I was captivated by the way she executes her ideas and explains her thought process behind her art. Along with the social norms she is breaking, she is a great support system for people around her. She enables people to explore their own ideas and does things like offering her own personal space to be used by strangers to let them talk and express their own ideas. Micol Hebron is a great artist and I hope she continues to receive more support. 

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