Harriet Richardson is an online performance artist who has been making provocative digital work since 2009 using Instagram as main tool. Her social account can be seen as a diary through which she expresses herself and her femininity through a contemporary and irreverent language that manages to summarize her vision as an artist who moves in the era of social networks.

Regarding social media, Harriet expresses herself with raw frankness, condemning the distorted perception that users —particularly men— have of women as sexual objects for everyone's mercy. Even through irony, the message of empowerment, respect, and equality that the artist launches to her audience is strong and catchy through the affect her physical appearance has. Harriet knows the rules of the game—the so-called communicative syllogisms of the digital age—and she knows how to express more than what the eye can see.

As can usually happen, there is a profound divide between real life and digital life, which the artist narrates and analyzes through an eye interested and trained in the social dynamics experienced: what is the gap between the perceived and what is real when we deal with social networks? How much is true and how much is induced by the intention of wanting to represent a certain reality —fictitious and imaginary— influenced by the imagination of the observer?

Harriet Richardson, you are halfway between a performer and a micro-influencer. That’s ironic because it's clear that you use your social media profile to do comedy and meme about men. How and when did you start?

Wow – that’s the first time I’ve been referred to as an influencer, and a micro one at that. Does that mean I can only influence people in tiny ways?

I’ve recently started referring to myself as an ‘online performance artist’ which I think is about as close as I’m getting to a title of sorts. In truth, I’ve been making provocative digital work for about as long as I’ve had internet access – so since 2009. One of my biggest regrets is deleting my ‘childhood’ Facebook account, but it’s probably also the reason I’ve not yet been cancelled.

You are beautiful, irreverent, and controversial. You play a lot with your femininity. Could you name three women who inspire you?

Thank you, I think. Three women who inspire me are Carolee Schneemann, Julia Fox and Anne Frank.

Carolee Schneemann was a pioneer, using her body as a canvas to challenge societal norms and break down barriers in the male-dominated world of art. Her fearless approach to expressing femininity and sexuality in her work has always been an inspiration. And she’s one of the artists that first made me think that I might be an artist too; the intimate pictures of her with her cat in a messy flat, the ‘logbooks’ she kept of the men she’d slept with, the letters to herself – I’ve never felt so seen and so unoriginal in my life.

Julia Fox inspires me as she is unapologetically herself, which isn’t an easy feat in the digital age. Her ability to own her narrative, especially in such a public space, and her raw authenticity is empowering (look up her Vogue flat tour and you’ll know exactly what I mean). She uses her platform to tell her story on her own terms, showing that women can be vulnerable, strong and hot as fuck.

Anne Frank is everything from a picture of strength, defiance, and teenage lust – as well as a testament to the importance of documentation as both an artist and a person. It’s easy to reduce her to the top line facts we all know of her story, but I find her perspective on life and her work completely compelling.

I don’t know if it’s still true now, but when I was at school Anne Frank was the topic of so many jokes – a meme just before meme’s took off. To be reduced to a joke in a playground when your life and death had such profound meaning, is an art form in itself. It’s the perfect example of society’s inability to deal with tragedy and horror, reflected in the powerful legacy of one young woman.

Above all, Frank's determination, and consistency in maintaining her diary, even under the most challenging circumstances, are a fantastic example of her resilience and the enduring power of the human spirit – all contained within a teenager. Her ability to capture her experiences so candidly, including the tender moments of teenage lust, shatters the barriers of time and circumstance, connecting us to her reality and reminding us of our shared humanity. She stands as an enduring symbol of the strength of character and the depth of introspection that can emerge even in the face of unimaginable adversity. A true icon.

I think people think I hate men, which couldn’t be further from the truth. In this spirit, I’d also like to give a shout out to the non female-identifying people who have had a deep impact on me and my work, in ascending order of hotness. Andy Warhol, Richard Ayoade, Bo Burnham, my dad, Jim Carrey, Alex Turner, Italian Bach, Seann Walsh, Vincent Van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, Colonel Saunders, Zach Zucker, Cher and Andy Kaufman.

As an artist who works with social networks through provocations, could you list the ins and outs of working with social networks?

I detest what social media has become, but we mustn’t deny that it’s always been somewhat dark. Let us not forget that Facebook was originally created with the purpose of ranking hot women in a college dorm – can we really say it isn’t that now?

Since I first signed up to Facebook in 2009, I’ve felt a pressure to curate and morph my online life into consumable chunks, which has certainly influenced the art I make today. The very nature of social media is that you must abide to 10 square images at most, or a certain number of words, or even the unspoken, unclear, completely bias censorship laws (don’t even get me started on that). All these constraints make for a fantastic creative playground.

One of the major downsides to social media is the access that straight men have to me. The DM’s where a guy is just speaking to himself are the worst – super unhinged and creepy. It seems to be a common argument that by me putting myself and my art ‘out there’ I’m ‘asking for’ the unwanted attention. While I accept that having an audience is part of my practice, suggesting that I’m responsible for the unacceptable behaviour of others and how they perceive my work is outrageous. It’s the online equivalent of ‘but how short was your skirt’ and it’s important it’s recognised as such.

You're the kind of person I'd spend a Sunday with smoking and watching true crime documentaries on YouTube. What is your favourite comfort food?

All this tells me is that the curated version of myself that you perceive online is working. I don’t smoke and I hate chilling. I’m in a weird space at the moment where the people I interact with are split into two groups; those who know me in real life and those who call me Hats. The divide between what I want people to believe of me and what is true hasn’t been an issue until now, and I’m interested to see if this is still true in the future. Of course, some parts of my online self are true, for example: I love holding a cigarette to look cool, but I don’t smoke.

As someone who is often trying to find comfort following some new terrible decision, I have a few tried and tested foods that never fail to help. If I’m on my period, I melt a whole bar of Cadbury’s dairy milk into a mixing bowl of cornflakes and eat it with a spoon. I had a crush on someone at the beginning of the year and went through a really difficult period of trying to mourn something that never happened – this is when I discovered that a bowl of potato smilies can float in the bath. Innovation often occurs in the face of despair. Potato smilies are great.

Yours is a fight against the patriarchy through nudes and memes: would you consider yourself more of a feminist or a thirst trapper?

I think you might be answering your own question here [flirty, feminine laugh]. Feminism has needed a rebrand since I became aware of it. There are so many incredible people fighting for equality and representation, but the term still seems to have a negative connotation for many. It's about empowerment, respect, and equality, but it's often misinterpreted as something aggressive or anti-men.

When I first got Instagram, I would use it just like anyone else. It was the perfect testament to Bo Burnham’s ‘White woman’s Instagram’. Now it’s one of my main tools as an artist. Interestingly, both uses required the same amount of curation and performance. I don’t see much difference at all between art-directing a nonchalant hot chocolate and note pad in a Costa Coffee and using it as a springboard to launch my recent 100 dates project. Both are meticulously crafted representations of a moment or idea, designed to evoke a certain response from the observer. Both are the creation and projection of a narrative.

Chaining ourselves to statues with catchy slogans on flattened Amazon boxes won’t cut it in the digital sphere. It’s more important than ever to adapt protest and apply the everyday language that we all understand and have access to. That’s why I merge feminism and ‘thirst traps’ as you so delicately put it. Selfies, DM conversations and click-bait articles are all in our daily vocabulary, so naturally they’re brilliant medium when speaking to today’s audience of the horny, indoorsy, meme-led masses.

Although I have an instant vomit-reaction to the phrase ‘thirst trap’, I think it’s interesting because in my case, it is quite an effective trap. I don’t want to trap men (I imagine that’s its origin meaning?), but I utilize the affect my physical appearance has to engage a wide audience (not just men, god forbid) in narratives that move me and hopefully them. In short, if using my body and art to provoke thought and challenge feminist stereotypes makes me a thirst trapper, then I'll wear that title with pride.

When you look at my body of work, utilizing my physical image is only a small part of the work I do – the fact it’s the topic of so many questions I’m asked and conversations I’ve had shows how important is still is as a tool.