‘Keep it au courant’ was the editorial steer given for writing the Artlaw column in Art Monthly’s first issue of October 1976. The column has always been free to choose subjects, and how to treat them: whether to advocate, alert, educate, entertain, campaign, caution, complain, inform, investigate, notify, predict, recommend, suggest, or question.
In this landmark 500th issue of Art Monthly, the column considers a legal action currently being pursued by an artist claiming unlawful censorship of her work. It has all the ingredients of an ‘asymmetric dispute’, a case with a major imbalance in power, funding, and legal teams: a minnow versus a giant.
Emma Shapiro is a US artist and activist based in Spain, whose practice explores themes of censorship, body politics, and digital freedom. A central concern is the arbitrary and often gendered censorship of female-presenting bodies across social media platforms and broader society. Through direct public engagement and digital activism, her work consistently highlights the double standard applied to female nipples, advocating for their normalization and de-sexualisation as a fundamental aspect of body equality. Conceptually, Shapiro positions her practice at the intersection of art, activism, and legal advocacy.
In 2017, Shapiro launched Exposure Therapy, a project promoting the ‘normalisation of female-presenting nipples in online and public spaces’. Women and ‘those who present as female/femme’ were invited to send Shapiro photographs of their nipples, which she transferred onto stickers and distributed free of charge worldwide ‘so that they can be placed in public locations in the hopes of normalising nipples of all genders’. In 2018, to expand the project’s reach, Shapiro created an Instagram account, @nipeople.
In December 2025, Shapiro posted a short video showing a public utility pole covered in Exposure Therapy’s nipple stickers, whereupon, the account was suspended by Instagram, which cited alleged violations of ‘account integrity’ in its contractual terms and conditions of service. Shapiro submitted an appeal through Instagram’s one-click in-app process, but the account was permanently deleted the next day. Shapiro filed a complaint to the independent regulator responsible for enforcing Spain’s competition law, the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC).
The complaint is against Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta), the US multinational technology company headquartered in California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads – each of which applies Meta’s standard contractual terms and conditions of service to all account holders and users. Shapiro complains that, when Instagram suspended then terminated her @nipeople account, Meta/Instagram failed to comply with legal obligations under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
From 2023, the DSA introduced a strict harmonised framework for content moderation by Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) such as Instagram: they cannot ban or restrict user accounts arbitrarily or through opaque, unappealable notifications. Shapiro contends that Meta failed to provide a sufficiently clear statement of reasons for its decisions to suspend and delete her account, deny access to an effective internal complaint-handling process; and failure to act in a diligent, objective and proportionate manner when imposing the severe sanction of permanent account termination.
In the UK, the DSA’s equivalent is the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA): both statutes place similar obligations on VLOPs. Under the OSA, users must be able to report illegal content easily, and providers must operate complaints procedures that are easy to access, easy to use, transparent and which provide for appropriate action to be taken. Users should be able to complain about, among other things, the removal or de-prioritisation of their content and actions taken against them, as well as a provider’s non-compliance. The OSA is implemented and enforced by the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the independent government-approved regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, equivalent to Spain’s CNMC.
The outcome of Shapiro’s case is likely to have significant ramifications for Meta’s platforms and services, which are accessible by users in most countries. In recent years, many user communities have been aggrieved by Meta’s introduction of automated AI moderation to review potential community guideline violations – including nudity – leading to unfounded account suspensions or deletions. For her part, Shapiro contends that a significant danger lies not just in content removal, but in the ensuing ‘chilling effect’ that prompts creators to avoid controversial subjects or self-censor, thereby inhibiting experimental or critical artistic expression.
Shapiro has been advised and assisted throughout by a worldwide network of pro bono advocates, who specialise in supporting artists subjected to censorship or persecution: Avant-Garde Lawyers (AGL). Shapiro’s lead advocate is Andra Matei, a Paris-based art lawyer and AGL’s founder. Matei stresses that Shapiro’s complaint seeks to apply the DSA not only to the removal of individual content, but to the termination of the artist’s account as a whole, which resulted in the loss of years of work, her artistic archive, audience, income, professional visibility, and her space for public debate. Matei points out that Instagram relied on a generic ‘account integrity’ rationale without affording Shapiro ‘a meaningful way to understand the decision or respond to it, adding that: ‘The DSA is meant to ensure that platforms are not beyond legal scrutiny. Meta is powerful, but it is not outside the law.’
Matei’s credentials and experience are notable. Having represented artists before national and international courts, since admission to the Paris Bar in 2020, Matei is known for developing innovative legal strategies that combine the expertise of lawyers and art professionals to protect artists and the creative process. Before founding AGL, she worked at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where she reviewed hundreds of cases on the protection of fundamental rights. She has lectured on human rights litigation, art law and artistic freedom at institutions such as the Paris Bar School, New York University, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the European Court of Human Rights. Matei received the Pro Bono Prize of the Paris Bar, and the title of Lawyer Emeritus of the Quebec Bar.
Matei believes that ‘every artist deserves robust legal support, regardless of their ability to afford it’. Her mission is to revolutionise legal services for artists, offering them guidance and protection in an evolving legal landscape. She approaches the practice of law with nuance, and possesses a profound understanding of the interplay between legal intricacies and artistic expression. ‘The law can be intimidating, difficult to grasp for those who do not practice it,’ she says. ‘I wanted to democratize it, to make it accessible to those who are afraid of it and who see it as an instrument of coercion rather than as an instrument that protects and strengthens their rights.’
AGL’s raison d’être is to ensure that artists can imagine and create freely, without fear of censorship, persecution, or legal challenges. Supported by international organisations such as the UN, the network provides innovative legal strategies that protect the rights of artists worldwide. Its approach is bold and unconventional, as its chosen name suggests: their lawyers navigate complex legal issues, developing creative solutions that allow art and artists to continue to inspire, challenge, and transform society. From the outset, AGL has pursued a strong pro bono practice, which is sustained and expanded through a range of optional paid services offered at reduced or flexible rates to ensure accessibility. Every paid engagement directly supports the pro bono work for artists who have no means to pay for legal support.
AGL’s specialised legal assistance is tailored to meet the needs of artists. Immediate support is given to artists in vulnerable situations, by connecting them with local lawyers, then overseeing each case. As with Shapiro’s current action against Meta/Instagram, AGL especially takes on cases that have the potential to create structural change for artists worldwide: designing a legal advocacy and media strategy, and building a case intervention team to implement them and supervise their execution. To deliver this work, AGL maintains and develops a global network of pro bono lawyers, artists, art historians, translators, scholars and other professionals committed to AGL’s mission. Fifty years ago, a kindred network of pro bono art lawyers was established in the UK: volunteer barristers and solicitors providing a free-of-charge information, advice and help service on legal matters relating to the visual arts.
The network was a key product of the Artlaw Research Project (ARP), which had been commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation: an international charitable body that made significant interventions via research in fields of the arts and culture, social welfare and education, aimed at having long-lasting effects in the UK and beyond. ARP’s launch in 1976 coincided with the inaugural publication of Art Monthly, for which the lead researcher was invited to contribute this column. Over the next two years, consultations throughout the British Isles were held with artists, public and private administrators, collectors, dealers and lawyers to discover the extent of any unmet need for specialist legal services to the visual arts.
During these meetings, hundreds of consultees asked for immediate help with urgent legal problems, which the lead researcher alone could not handle. Favours were called in from legal friends and colleagues, who volunteered their services on a pro bono basis – eventually constituting themselves as the ‘Artlaw Clinic’. At the same time, this column was a complementary monthly vehicle for informing and educating in order to equip readers with basic understandings of such matters as copyright, censorship, income tax self-assessment, finding and maintaining a studio, exhibition-only loan agreements; and contracts for studio sales, public and private commissions, and consignment to agents and dealers. Subsequent columns to date have been a platform providing readers with awareness and understanding of artlaw matters.
In marking the 50th year of Art Monthly and this column, it is fitting to recognise a new generation of travellers along a path pioneered 50 years ago. Matei and AGL share the same values and commitment to supporting living artists brushing with the law, especially those unable to afford specialist legal advice and help. It is also apt to record the immense contribution made by Art Monthly to the original foundations of this niche field of expertise in the UK.
© Henry Lydiate October 2026