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Ever since Instagram launched the Snapchat-inspired story feature, personal feeds became less about keeping up with your friends and family and more about curating a stream of your own personal interests. Your mouthwatering lunch, the hotel you’ll be staying at for the weekend, and your humblebrag gym photos — they’re best left as story material with an expiration date. The feed is reserved for carefully curated moments.
Whether you’re interested in the sights of hedonistic egalitarian subcultures or a seeker of the world’s most hidden and breathtaking locales, it’s likely your Instagram feed is an accurate reflection of your primary interests or aspirations. And it’s safe to assume one of your interests is street art — you did click on the article after all. It’d be a shame if you came here looking for pizza.
If you love street art but aren’t always able to go prowling through your nearest metropolitan area to find it, Instagram is the perfect tool to both admire and curate a great stream of vibrant paste-ups, tags, and murals — bringing all the best from the city streets to the palm of your hand. You’ve likely heard of popular artists like Banksy or Shepard Fairey, you won’t find them on this list but that doesn’t mean they aren’t deserving of a follow. This is for those aficionados eager for new creators to enter their lives.
Lady Aiko
Tokyo-born, New York City-based artist Aiko has been active in the street art scene since the mid-90s. She’s worked with Banksy and apprenticed for Takashi Murakami in his Brooklyn studio before making a name for herself as one of the most important street artists of this century. Aiko has been commissioned by such luminaries as Louis Vuitton, Apple, and everyone’s favorite former First Lady, Michelle Obama.
Aiko’s style is bold, hyper-feminine and bursting with color. A truly great artist and sure to be a favorite fixture amongst your feed.
Alice Mizrachi
Alice Mizrachi is an educator as well as a muralist and mixed media collage artist and her art reflects her many trades. The core theme driving much of her work is the connectedness of community. Mizrachi often delves into work that explores identity in an attempt to engage the community that is housing her art. Mizrachi will be a hopeful and optimistic presence on your feed and in addition to her great mural work you’ll get an artist that has her hands in many mediums of expression.
Ant Carver
London based artist Ant Carver creates strikingly bold graphic portraiture, often in large scale, that never fails to catch and keep your gaze. Mixing traditional painting techniques with the vibrancy of street art gives Ant Carver a style that just lives in contrast and juxtaposition. Its brilliant elegance would make even those squares who think graffiti is just vandalism rethink their narrow views. With posts averaging about five a month, Ant Carver’s striking style will never overstay it’s welcome in your feed and show up often enough to make you pause through the endless mind-numbing scrolling that we’ve all experience. There is an elegance to the work that makes it unlike everything else on this list.
Dee Dee
Not much is known about the mysterious street artist Dee Dee who’s iconic paste-ups have been popping up around New York City. The art made by Dee Dee uses familiar iconography that recontextualizes nostalgia with an almost psychedelic shifting of perspective that plays with concepts of identity and persona. Dee Dee’s art is pure rock n roll and frankly, we can’t get enough of this vital work that is always bursting with color and cool.
In addition to the streets, Dee Dee also has some gallery shows so if you’re lucky enough to be in New York make sure you check this artist out.
Sara Erenthal
Brooklyn based Sara Erenthal’s work deals with themes of displacement and perseverance. Erenthal became a street artist after fleeing from an arranged marriage from her ultra-Orthodox family, deciding instead to travel the world and leave her mark across its many walls. Her murals are simple but direct, often containing phrases across the shirts of her cartoon creations, sometimes seemingly a recreation of herself. Erenthal’s healing is on display within her art delivering something that is both personal and universal at the same time.
Fumero
Fumero is a self-described “graftstract artist.” Practicing in the art of “Fumeroism” this prolific street artist uses expressive color pallets rooted in classic graffiti-art motifs. There is an overwhelming sense of movement in each one of Fumero’s wall paintings, causing the eye to dart across the subject matter of his overwhelmingly saturated artwork. The spontaneity of Fumero’s work is fascinating as he seamlessly mixes fine art, graffiti, and the abstract, for an end product that’ll make you wish he’d come to a city near you.
Robert Janz
At 86 years old Robert Janz is by far the oldest artist on this list but his work is no less vibrant and urgent than some of his young contemporaries. Janz is one of Ireland’s most celebrated artists and for the past 40 years he’s been using the New York City streets and walls as his canvas.
Strikingly simplistic, Janz work never fails to delight the visual senses and is almost never completely torn down, instead merely pasted over with the advertisements of tomorrow only to be pasted over once again by Janz.
Kashink
Kashink’s signature is the John Water’s like pencil mustache that appears throughout her work. This Paris-based artist considers herself an activist as much as she does an artist. Since 2013 Kashink has been wearing a penciled-on mustache in an effort to facilitate conversation about beauty and gender norms. Her colorful and expressive street art is a psychedelically alien trip that is as monstrous but beautiful.
Kazy Usclef
Street artist Kazy Usclef’s art is full of geometric shapes that subtly recall Picasso. Using deep and moody tones, Usclef’s mural work stands in stark contrast to any wall it adorns, inviting the viewer to get lost in the heavy use of rich color. Usclef’s work looks best when it has a large and sprawling wall to fill with the abstract stylings that are signature of the artist’s work — it can be seen throughout France, where the mysterious artist appears to reside.
Adam Lucas
Adam Lucas has a pop art style that is bursting with color and absolutely unhinged joy. There is something inherently feel-good about Lucas’ art, it’s guaranteed to make your worst of days instantly brighter. 80s and 90s iconography are common themes in Lucas’ art as he recontextualizes them in his colorful cartoony style. His art is highly referential, and that just adds to the fun of it all. Lucas made a name for himself parodying Banksy with his alter ego Hanksy, famously painting the Trump-shit emoji that made national headlines. He has since decided to drop the Hanksy moniker and deliver art under his own name, masterfully surpassing the meme-indebted subject matter that he made a name for himself with.
OSGEMEOS
Identical twin brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo make up OSGEMEOS (stylized from Os Gêmeos), a Portuguese word translating to The Twins. The team’s murals are recognized worldwide, with their art amongst the streets of Sao Paulo as well as throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. Hip Hop culture plays a major influence in the art of OSGEMEOS and the signature yellow-skinned characters that inhabit their art represent the tinge of yellow that the twins say color everything in their dreams. Sounds like wild twin stuff, but we’re here for it!
Nina Palomba
Nina Palomba’s art harkens back to the time of early American cartoons and it’s no surprise she was once a production assistant at Disney. But Palomba’s art isn’t merely a throwback to a simpler age, instead, through the medium of street art Palomba updates classic cartoon styles and recontextualizes them through a modern lens that has one foot placed in the fine art world. Palomba’s work exudes joy and feel-good energy and her colorful cartoon imagery is sure to put a smile on even the biggest cynic’s face.
Animaniacs, Archie, Walt-era Disney, it’s all here.
Max Sansing
Max Sansing’s art can be found all across the streets of Chicago. The son of two artist parents, Sansing is a Chicago born and based artist who’s mural work makes great use of a mix of stunning realism and absolutely out there color palettes. There is a strange Norman Rockwellian quality to Sansing’s work that isn’t obvious, but as it sits with you it reveals itself in the playful reverence the two artist’s share for their subject matter.
Sickid
Not much information exists about Sickid, with a name that vague they’re very difficult to Google and with only around 4k Instagram followers this artist is operating way way under the radar, but don’t expect it to stay that way. Sickid’s art can already be found all across Los Angeles and is easily identifiable by the distinct way the artist draws faces. Don’t be surprised if you start to see Sickid’s art appearing in your city, and if you’re in Los Angeles look to a billboard near you for a chance to spot Sickid’s work before it’s taken down.
Libby Schoettle (PhoebeNewYork)
PhoebeNewYork is the alter ego of New York City-based artist Libby Schoettle. Phoebe is like a dark and witty Betty Boop with a similarly oversized cartoony head. However, she exudes a femininity that isn’t indebted to the male gaze like Boop was. She can be seen on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Sydney, London, and Barcelona spreading a humorous and light-hearted joy wherever she goes. PhoebeNewYork is updated so often that she’ll start to feel like a real person in your feed, popping up across the city streets of the world, albeit a person with an abnormally sized head. (Likeall of us when we were teenagers).
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