june bellebono
The London-based writer, cultural producer, facilitator and model june bellebono is a force to be reckoned with. As her multifaceted, genre-spanning career might suggest, bellebono doesn’t subscribe to prescriptive models of how to be, and she’s unapologetic about creating space for herself and others. In 2021 she launched oestrogeneration, a platform that centers transfeminine voices, partly in response to that lack of authentic coverage of trans women in mainstream media. “I don’t believe a magazine holds the power to bring the kind of liberation which will soothe my anger, but I do believe it can shift the narrative,” she wrote in an essay for us last year.
Bebhinn Eilish
Artist and designer Bebhinn Eilish makes work that’s distinctly Irish. This is both in terms of her mythical aesthetic, which draws on the history and folklore of Ireland, but also in terms of her politically engaged approach. Feminism has an important history and role in Ireland, with feminist activists having been instrumental in securing recent progress, including abortion access, Eilish weaves this stance through her work. “Happy International Women’s Day to all women, and not just your personal definition of womanhood,” the artist recently wrote on Instagram. “Forever grateful to be brought up in a fully female household with the most beautiful and inspiring women to guide me through womanhood.”
Nouri Flayhan
A self-described “Levantine Mountain girl”, illustrator Nouri Flayhan grew up in Kuwait and is now based in Dubai. Her work is a celebration of the SWANA region, and she is particularly concerned with creating rich portrayals of the woman of SWANA. “At my British school in Kuwait, I was really underrepresented. I now feel this responsibility to my younger self to tell stories of underrepresented people or the women around me are things that didn’t have the platform. That drives my creativity, too,” she said in an interview with Esquire Middle East. “I realized that illustration holds so much power to translate what’s happening. It stops people in their tracks. It starts conversations that otherwise would never happen.
Ariel Zetina
Ariel Zetina’s artistry spans music production, deejaying, and writing; specifically, she is a playwright. This may seem an unlikely combination, but with Zetina it falls into place perfectly – she is an artist who deals in dualities. Drawing on her Belizean heritage, the Chicago-based artist is breaking new ground in the queer club scene. Writing for Pitchfork, Gio Santiago described Zetina’s debut album, Cyclorama as, “one of 2022’s most expansive techno records. Turning club music into a wide-ranging interrogation of queerness, Cyclorama is soft and hard in the same breath.”
Angelica Liv
Born and raised in Bucaramanga, a northern Columbia city, but based in Berlin since 2012, Angelica Liv draws on the folk traditions of her homeland to create her playful, saturated images. Femme figures feature prominently in her work, but, as Liv is interested in the deconstruction of clichés and stereotypes, they depict an unexpected, complex version of womanhood. “Within my creative practice I reflect a lot on what it’s like to be born a woman, identify as one and at the same time feel very uncomfortable in one gender category,” she has said, of her recent Women Life Freedom T-shirt.
Okay Kaya
Starting out as an actress and model and now with three albums under her belt, Kaya Wilkins, AKA Okay Kaya, has gone from strength to musical strength. The Norwegian-American musician, who is based in Berlin, grew up with five brothers and a mother who played music “20 hours a day”, and it shows in her wide-ranging output. Like almost all the women on this list, she is multifaceted, and deals in the complexities of dual realities: “I’m just not interested in [songs] that feel like they’re only one thing,” she said in a 2020 interview with iD. “There are exceptions but I tend to not like really sad songs with really sad accompaniments. I feel like it’s too on-the-nose or something.”
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