DoubleTap: Hilde Atalanta

DoubleTap is an interview series highlighting artists whose work explores sex, body, and identity.

 

For artist Hilde Atalanta, both gender and sexuality are a limitless well of creative inspiration. Based in Amsterdam, the 29-year-old illustrator and painter uses graphite pencils, watercolor, acrylic paint, and black ink in their quest to reveal the inner workings of diverse identities and relationships. In addition to making custom portraits, Atalanta runs two projects, The Vulva Gallery, which explores sexual health through illustrations of all kinds of vulvas, and Youā€™re Welcome Club, which focuses on body positivity and inclusion. Atalanta hopes their artwork challenges the way we see and experience our bodies by showing us a spectrum of human beings in all shapes, sizes and colors.

In this interview, we speak with the artist about their creative process and the inspiration behind Youā€™re Welcome Club.

 

Hi Hilde! Will you tell us more about you?

H:Ā My name is Hilde Atalanta, Iā€™m 29 years old. I’m an illustrator and painter, living and working in Amsterdam. I love making portraits, and I like working in different styles. I mainly work with graphite pencils, watercolour, acrylic paint and black ink. I recently started making bigger works on canvas. My work revolves around the search for identity and different forms of relationships, sexualities and gender identities. In my work I like to play with gender; many of the – often androgynous – characters I paint are based on female models. Besides making portraits, I’m working on two other projects. With The Vulva Gallery I focus on body positivity and sexual health education. With my most recent project You’re Welcome Club, I focus on diversity, body positivity and inclusivity.

 

What inspired you to launch Youā€™re Welcome Club?

In the past two years Iā€™ve been running The Vulva Gallery, where Iā€™m portraying a wide variety in vulva shapes, opening up conversation about sexual health and related topics. After a year I felt the need to broaden my view; I wanted to speak about human diversity in a broader sense and I decided to start up a second account: Youā€™re Welcome Club. The general reason for focusing on diversity is that Iā€™ve been noticing over the years that the popular media are portraying a certain image, ā€œidealā€ or ā€œperfectā€ women and men. They are mostly thin/athletic models, often whiteā€”and mainly very feminine women and very masculine men. Many individuals (including myself) donā€™t recognize themselves in these models, presented as ā€œidealā€ women and men. Seeing these ā€œperfectā€ models can make an individual feel insecure about themselves, even feeling left outā€”as itā€™s often an impossible standard they have to live up to. However, seeing oneself represented (in popular media) can give an individual the reassurance that they are normal, that they belong, that they are part of our society. With Youā€™re Welcome Club I wanted to make a series of illustrations where Iā€™m showing a wide diversity of human beings, with different kinds of backgrounds, sexualities, gender identities and body shapes. An honest representation of our society, but with the emphasis on individuals that arenā€™t often portrayed.

 

How long have you been developing this body of work? How do you hope to grow this series in the future?

I started Youā€™re Welcome Club in August 2017. Iā€™m hoping it will keep continue growing into an even bigger and more inclusive series, and an interactive and supportive community.

 

What is your process for creating these illustrations? Do you draw from real life? Do you make these digitally or by hand?

I draw all illustrations by hand. First Iā€™m making rough pencil sketches, and Iā€™m tracing those with a black fineliner. Then Iā€™m scanning these line illustrations, and Iā€™m coloring them in using Photoshop. Iā€™m also planning on making a series of paintings using acrylic or gouache paint.

 

What has surprised you most about doing illustrations around body image and identity?

Thereā€™s so much more diversity in the world than Iā€™ve could have imagined before portraying this diversity.

 

How do you use your artwork to champion inclusion, diversity, body and sex positivity?

Iā€™m simply representing diversity. I feel that images can tell stories and convey emotions in different ways than words can do.

 

What do you hope viewers will take away from seeing your illustrations?

Iā€™m aiming to make a series of illustrations in which people recognize themselves. I want people to feel welcome, to feel included, and to know that they belong in our society just as much as everybody else. Also I want to represent and thereby normalize bodies that arenā€™t often portrayed. By portraying a wide range in body diversity Iā€™m saying: all bodies are good bodies; we are all valid human beings and diversity is a wonderful thing.

I would love to live in a more inclusive society, where people are open towards each otherā€™s differences and where they respect each other. I noticed that simply respecting other human beings seems to be a difficult thing. Itā€™s easy to get confused by someone who looks different. Itā€™s easy to be scared of people who feel different from us. Still, I feel we need to invest in having an empathic, or at least respectful attitude towards each other. The world is full of diversity, why would we ignore this? It would be so boring if we would all look and act the same. We can learn so much from our differences. Itā€™s simply so much more interesting to look at the world from all kinds of different perspectives. ā€œDifferentā€ isnā€™t something to be afraid of, as thereā€™s so much beauty in our differences.