Drawing in circles: Feminized labour in autobiographical comics and cartoons on Instagram

Instagram, a social media platform initially designed for sharing mobile photography, is increasingly populated by cartoonists and comics artists who use it as their primary publication platform for diary comics and reflections of their everyday (work)lives. As drawing their lives becomes paid work, whether through direct patronage models or derived print publications, the practices and themes of work life become entangled in the Instagram posts and surrounding communities. In doing so, these artists are reshaping comics and cartoons to fit the affordances of Instagram, as well as of the rhythms and experiences of precarious, feminized labour. This article examines the ways that the single-panel cartoon and the traditional comic strip are reconfigured on Instagram and how this play with form emerges alongside gendered experiences of work, creativity, care and precarity. Through the lens of feminist critique, the article departs from the example of US cartoonist Lucy Knisley, tracing how changes in her working conditions and care responsibilities have material and formal effects on her cartooning. Expanding the argument from this initial example, the article analyses work by a variety of comics artists on Instagram to explore the aesthetics and affects of drawing feminized, precarized work lives.