Bianca Harrison

It's hard to not be enthralled, overwhelmed or passionate about the illustrations of Bianca J Harrison. Visually pleasing and excellently drawn, no question, but it's the messages behind all of her work that really hit home—targeting themes and issues that are often shunned, but most certainly shouldn’t be. She speaks her truth wholeheartedly, never shying away from making her viewing audience uncomfortable. In fact, she thrives off of it. After all, if you’re not making people feel uncomfortable, then you’re not truly serving your divine purpose.

I FaceTimed Bianca at her home in Brisbane, where we discussed the themes behind her work—mental health, feminism and abuse; both of us quickly realising that we both have a lot more in common than we initially thought. 

For people who don’t know you, can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?

So my name is Bianca, I’m 25. Fuck, I don’t even know what I do—I draw a lot of pictures but it’s kind of like therapy for myself. That’s honestly how I’d explain it. It’s me reminding myself of things that I need reminding about; clarifying my own feelings and thoughts through my art.

I struggle a lot with knowing how I feel and knowing my opinion on things, until I see it on a piece of paper or in something I’ve created, then I’m like oh, that’s how I feel! Honestly, it’s just a mixture of notes to myself.

That’s good, though. Because it shows that you’re genuinely passionate about what you’re putting out there—you’re not doing it because you feel like you have to, you genuinely want to.

Exactly! But yeah, I do illustration and graphic design. One day I’d like to do illustration full time as a career…I’ve got a huge interest in mental health and psychology, so that’s also a big influence on my art and my drawings. I’m really interested in how humans work and how society works. It’s very interesting. Very fucked up too, though.

Oh yeah. And it’s bizarre that there’s this taboo around mental health and discussing mental health. Someone I know has started seeing a psychiatrist, and when we were talking about it, he said that he felt ashamed that he needed to see or speak to someone. At the time, I was like why would you say that? That’s silly, blah blah blah. But then when I was going through my period of bad mental health, I could see where he was coming from. It’s almost like ego comes into play and you don’t want to admit that you’re not okay.

Would you tell someone that had cancer that they can’t get chemotherapy? No. Mental health is health, and just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

Exactly! You take your car to a mechanic, who wouldn’t you take your brain to a psychologist? 

Totally. But I think a lot of the time, we’re almost just told that we need to be “okay”. Everyones upbringing is different, but I feel like with my upbringing there was this idea that things will just pass and get better. And sure, to some degree that is true. But sometimes there are instances where you need to make things better yourself.

You need to be able to talk about it openly. One of my big rules in life is that if I can’t quote my psychologist at you, you’re not my friend. Like, if it’s not normal to just be like oh yeah, my psych was saying this to me in passing conversation —then I’m sorry, but we’re just not friends.

I screenshot one of your works the other day, which read I’m tired of social media influencers and wellness gurus who treat mental health issues as a business opportunity. Let’s discuss.

This is something that I’ve been ranting about a lot over the last few weeks with one friend in particular. We’ve both kinda just gotten to the point where we scroll through Instagram and there’s so many people that are like, “Come to my ‘self-love’ workshop, buy my book, join this program…” Everyone’s an expert! But you sit back and you think how many of you that preach about this shit have actually done the work? How many of you are actually healthy role models? It honestly just feels like half the shit you see is coming from a business angle—they only care about you or care about your problems if you’re willing to buy their products, invest your money in them, or if you become a ‘fan’ of their social media. It’s just so disingenuous and it’s driving me nuts.

People are just making a profit out of selling this false idea of themselves online. But on the other side of things, as humans, we’re eating it up…

We are eating it up! We’re all going through the same mental health crisis. Everyone that I know has mental health problems and it’s not even like we have slight mental health problems - we’re all fucked up. We’re so fucked up right now that we will fall for anything if we feel like it’s going to save us—even if that means putting people on pedestals that, honestly, haven’t even acknowledged their deeper issues let alone done the work to heal them. Half the people we see online preaching about self-love aren’t living the wonderful, fantastic lives they say they are. If they’re basing their lives around how much money they make and how well they do on Instagram, that literally just goes to show that they don’t have good values, yet we’re following them anyway.

I don’t know, I think that it’s just very unhealthy to worship people online, and such an unhealthy message to send to younger people that genuinely want to improve their mental health.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 as well because there are some genuine people on social media that actually do want to help and that do genuinely care. But then, like you said, there are also those people who are just trying to profit off it. How do we weed through the shit to get through to the people that genuinely care for humanity and wish to see positive changes in society and not just an increase in their bank balance?

This is a generalisation, but I do find it funny how—as a society—we put so much effort into all these physical, materialistic facets of our life; trying to get the perfect job or the perfect relationship or the perfect house, but then if we’re crumbling on the inside, it doesn’t seem to take as high a priority.

I don’t know...I think if you really want to weed through the surface bullshit and find the people who genuinely care, then search for the people that aren’t profiting off caring—the ones that are spreading their message because they honestly, full-heartedly believe in it.

I feel like a lot of people that chase the materialistic things are crumbling on the inside— even if on the outside they look perfectly put together. All that materialistic shit is never going to make you happy, that’s not what makes a person happy. Doing what you love, even if you’re living minimally, that’s what’s going to make you more happy than being conventionally attractive, or having a new car, or a nice dress, or thousands of followers, or a “fancy” nine-to-five job.

And, ultimately, on your death bed, what are you going to think about?

I spent my whole life making money to live!

It’s a weird paradigm because you do need money to live. But, by that same token, you don’t just want to live to work. It’s a vicious cycle, we all need to find a happy medium!

Now…I wanna talk about boys…How great are they? A lot of the stuff that you post really resonates with me, like—it really resonates with me. There was one that said: They don’t love you, they just love the way you make them feel about themselves. And you illustrated next to one of my favourite quotes/statements—Boys will be held accountable for their actions.

Now, we’re going to talk about a couple of things—the idea of “boys will be boys” and toxic masculinity.

I would love to talk about those things, they’re my favourite things to talk about!

Phenomenal! Let's start with “boys will be boys” and how we as a society really need to eliminate that whole idea. And, on that, how your art—and correct me if I’m wrong—is very much directed towards dating and just generally how males treat females in hetero relationships.

To be honest, a lot of what I post about stems from my uni years; that’s where my mental health really hit rock bottom...I was partying hard, drinking several times a week, and taking a fuck load of drugs every weekend. I’d always felt like a bit of a loser at high school—I had absolutely no confidence in myself and I struggled with severe social anxiety, so when I moved to university I decided that I wanted to be someone new and to fit in with the “cool crowd”. The culture at uni was very much that the boys ran the campus and I spent the first few years I was there trying pretty fucking hard to fit in with them.

Eventually, I did make friends with this group…But once I kinda got in there and started watching the dynamics of how the group operated, it was so toxic, and it was very abusive—not even just in the way the boys spoke to the girls, but in the way that they spoke to and treated each other. Like, if they spoke about things that were considered feminine, or spoke about their feelings, or they cried, or they showed any softer side—they would tear each other down. They were constantly bullying each other, especially over things like physical appearances. There was this big show of I’m the strongest, I’m the most manly-man, I’m the best, I can root the most girls… and it was so degrading to women as well. Being around all of that, for the time period that I was around it, it was so damaging to my soul. I started internalising the messages that I was hearing, which was essentially: unless you’re a hot, fuckable-looking girl, you’re not worth anything. There was no value placed on a woman’s mental abilities, or her skills, her knowledge, or her intellect —they liked women that were hot and that made them look like “more” of a man.

I guess that’s kinda where all of that stems from—looking back at some of the things that my younger self went through and saw. Now that I’ve stepped back and started analysing it, I’ve started to realise that where we’re all going - in terms of the general population - is so wrong. I feel like that’s why so many boys suffer from such horrible mental health problems at the moment too; the concept of masculinity that they’re living within is so toxic—they’re so pressured to be strong and be tough, to “fuck bitches” —and it’s damaging all of us.

Our boys damage each other, then they go out and damage us as women. The whole culture that we live in at the moment operates in such a toxic, harmful way.

I think we’re at a good stage at the moment where the hard conversations are starting to be had more openly, but at the same time there is still more retaliation against them. So we’re essentially caught between a rock and a hard place. And I think, especially when it comes to males—and this is a generalisation—but they would get egotistical when it comes to anything to do with mental health. They’re either in denial or too ashamed because it goes against the grain of what their social surroundings have deemed as acceptable.

Right?! The amount of guys that I know that unfollowed me when I started posting all of that stuff—people that I was friends with, people that I knew and had always gotten along with really well. It was surprising, but also not... I guess a lot of what I was saying hit a nerve. And the amount of inboxes that I get when I post the man-related stuff—so many guys message me to attack what I’m saying and to tell me how wrong I am—this is why you’re wrong, this is how you’re wrong, blah blah blah. 

Of course you’re wrong. It’s not them, it’s you.

And I look at it and I’m like, you’re really proving my point here mate!

How do you deal with those messages? Do you acknowledge them or deal with them?

The majority I just don’t really respond to, to be honest. I don’t have the energy or the time to engage with people that clearly just want to argue or for me to conform to their worldview. Like, I’m sorry—take your argumentative vibes elsewhere. If you don’t like what I post on my page, unfollow it.

I used to care about how my message was received by other people—like, are they going to think I’m a bitch for saying this stuff? Are they going to think that I’m a horrible person? But now I’ve gotten to the point where it’s my truth and I’m just going to say it.

Exactly. You need to stay true to yourself and honour your truth, and people aren’t going to like everything that you say or do—no matter who you are or what you’re putting across, there are always going to be naysayers and people who will retaliate, but that’s just the nature of what we do.

The more people you get that are angry at what you’re saying, the more you’re on the right path because you’re shaking up those peoples comfortable states. The only time people retaliate is when you say something that hits a nerve, or you point out a quality that’s within them that they don’t want to acknowledge. That’s when they start getting egotistical about it—you attack me, I’m going to attack you back.

Whereas people could turn around and say you know what, I don’t necessarily agree with what you’re saying but that’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. I feel like people are just butt-hurt by a lot of things these days, especially when it goes against who they are as people. We’re living in a society that’s all driven by ego.

Seriously, a hundred percent. You really just have to take the bad with the good. I don’t know... I almost just see the negative responses as entertaining. Especially given that a lot of the particularly aggressive responses I get just seem to prove to me that my opinion and how I’m seeing the world is pretty accurate.

I meant, I’m always open to other peoples’ opinions, but I guess it’s just in how they present it.

Like, when they start attacking, it’s not cool.

I want to go back to a post that you did in December of last year about anxiety. I love the image that you have of the phone, and it’s got all of these alerts which are essentially screaming out anxiety. I was just like—yes. I feel this. 

You said earlier that all of the works that you create are derived from you, from personal experiences—if you don’t mind me asking, how do you deal with your own struggles with mental health and detaching which is, I assume a lot of, social media and the toxicity surrounding it?

I’ve been battling with my mental health pretty much my whole life… especially my anxiety. Because I’m quite introverted—I love spending time alone, I love working on my art. Using social media and my phone causes me so much more anxiety than before any of this technology existed. If I’m in my personal safe bubble and people text me and I don’t want to engage, I just won’t engage. If and when I want to engage, I’ll get back to you in a few days.

I enjoy having my phone off a lot. Posting my artwork and building a platform online means having to engage a lot with social media. Having days where I’m not connected at all is so important to me —when you’re always connected, you’re literally living in a reality that isn’t real. You’re living on your phone, you’re not actually engaging with the present moment or the people around you. It’s almost like a form of disassociation—when you’re spending a lot of time on your phone, you’ve disconnected and you’re not in the real world anymore.

With all of your artwork, you harness in on all of these feelings. I absolutely love your imagery, but the words that you associate with each of the pictures really hit home for me, and I’m sure many others. I think that’s why a lot of people have taken to your artwork, it’s that genuineness—you’re just being authentically you.

Thank you! And I do appreciate that. I do try to be as genuine as I can in my work. My work, as I said, is really for myself—I’m pretty fucking messed up, I’ve been through some shit, and I’ve got a lot of mental health problems. This is how I’m dealing with it. 

But you’re dealing with it in a way that you want to deal with it—you’re owning it, and that’s amazing.

I feel like, since I’ve started sharing how I’m feeling through my artwork, my mental health has gotten so much better… I finally have an outlet, I have a way to express myself. I think what I really struggled with before was that I didn’t have a way to express myself, because I find it really fucking hard to reach out to others and be like hey, I’m not feeling great or hey, I’m struggling. Or even to just tell someone what’s on my mind in general. I internalise things and I think about things a lot, but talking has never been my strong point.   

To be able to just sit there and draw a picture and write a description of how I’m feeling or what I’m struggling with, it makes the whole process so much easier. I can share who I am, how I feel and what I’ve been through, without having to have those tough conversations.

Funnily enough though, since I started sharing those parts of myself online - I’ve found it so much easier to do so in person. Now it’s almost like second nature. 

And you’re also treating it as therapy for yourself.

Another topic that you cover in a lot of your work is feminism and female empowerment. This is a topic that I feel very strongly about, but I think that label of being a feminist is something that I came to later in life because I think that, a. it was ignorance, and b. my mind always went to the extreme—extreme feminism. 

My best friend was the one that woke me up to it, and she said to me one day “Do you believe in equality of the sexes?” And I was like, “yeah.” And she said “Well, that’s feminism. You’re a feminist.” I was just like oh, that makes sense.

In my mind, the way that I felt society had portrayed it to me, was just the extremes of it—that’s why I struggled to identify with it for so long. How did you come to identify as a feminist, was there a lightbulb moment for you?

Honestly, it’s only been the last few years I’ve even thought about it, let alone began identifying as a feminist. In my childhood, I grew up in a house that was extremely male-dominated—my dad made all of the decisions, in a way that suited him, and was the person in our house that always had the final say. Going into university and growing up, it was very much the same in that I always based myself and the decisions I made—both consciously and unconsciously—around the men in my life.

And then one day, it kinda got to a point where—I think I can remember the exact moment—where I was like hold on, this is so fucked up. I was sitting there with a group of guys and the person that I was dating at the time, and—I can’t even remember what we were talking about—it was just something small. I’d been saying for months that I’d like to travel around Asia with my boyfriend, and how amazing it looked over there. And every time I brought it up he’d be like, no way, that looks shit—I have no interest in going there. Then we were sitting there one day with the group and another guy said “Oh, I just backpacked Asia! It was amazing.” And my ex goes, “Oh my god, that sounds fucking incredible—I would love to do that. What a good idea!” And I was literally sitting there like… you motherfucker, I’ve been saying this for months and you’re only listening now that another boy is saying it?!

Aside from that moment, I think what actually really sparked that part me of was that, at the time, I was watching Game of Thrones and I was seeing Khaleesi go from this shy, timid woman that was being abused by her brother, being handed from man to man, being raped, being beaten, and then all of a sudden she just became this badass that was like hold on, don’t you fucking raise a hand to me.

A lot of my feminist ideas come from characters in books or on TV, characters like her—those rare depictions you get of strong, intelligent women, who—despite being afraid—stand up and stand in their power. They make you think, like, hold on—a woman can be intelligent and say what she thinks. She doesn’t have to cater to the views and ways of men, which I think is predominant in our society.

It’s one thing acknowledging and accepting your role as a feminist, but there’s another outwardly speaking about it and tackling the subject. Like I’ve mentioned about your toxic masculinity pieces, or your mental health pieces, the messages behind your feminist pieces are also so strong and their is such power in putting those messages out there for everyone to see and read.

You were saying before about that almost lightbulb moment…

It was literally like a light switch went off in my head and I decided that I just didn’t want to be that way anymore. I didn’t want to live a life based around catering to a man. I didn’t want to be dictated to by guys because, honestly, the way that they see the world isn’t that great—it’s not really what I want to subscribe to. 

In terms of my mental health, I’ve always struggled the most when it comes to my physical appearance. I didn’t have much confidence up until a few years ago; I was very insecure when I was younger, very shy, never stood up for myself, and I kept getting myself into these situations where I was very much being abused and walked over, and just not treated very well in general. 

I remember there was this period of a few months, where my mental health was especially bad—I’d just been through a bad break-up, among other things, and was partying pretty fucking hard in an attempt to forget about it—and in that timeframe, I was raped by one guy and hit by another, hard enough that he left bruised handprints on me. That’s when it got to the point where I really hit rock bottom…I remember thinking to myself: if I don’t change the way that I’m reacting to the world, I don’t think I can keep going. And that’s when I started to get a bit more opinionated and a bit more mouthy and more inclined to stand up for myself. It was definitely a slow process though, not an overnight change. It was something I actively worked on for about two solid years, and am still working on to this day.

I did a lot of skill-building with my psychologist—we worked together on learning how to be assertive in a healthy way, and she walked me through setting boundaries. And then I guess from there I’ve just gone on to be someone that’s much more like: well, this is my opinion and you can fucking have it.

This is good. We need more people to give a massive fuck you to the world and to speak up when they’ve been wronged for abused, whether it’s mentally, emotionally, physically—it’s not okay. The idea of abuse is so abrasive but it’s important that we address it, it’s all around us.

I honestly don’t think I could name any of my female friends that haven’t been abused or sexually assaulted.

And a lot of women probably don’t see it—they don’t see how they’re being treated as abuse.

It’s normalised! I think our culture is very abusive in general, and a big part of that is because little girls aren’t taught to stand up for themselves…Even with a lot of the shit that’s on Instagram; all that be kind—sprinkle love and light on everything bullshit you see. Like, yeah that’s a nice thought and all, but that’s not going to fucking work. Stop normalising and encouraging passive behaviour in women and girls.  

I think to be a good person, you’ve got to be a good balance of feminine and masculine. You’ve gotta be kind and empathetic, but then you’ve also gotta be able to state your opinion and stand up for yourself and draw your boundaries when you need to. You’ve got to be able to say no, I don’t agree with what you’re saying—that’s not right…

…or this makes me uncomfortable…

Yeah! And little girls, they’re not taught those skills. It’s something you’ve really got to teach yourself as you get older so that you’ve got the courage to start standing up.

For me, it’s not something that comes naturally—and what I think is funny is that, on Instagram, I might give the impression that it does come very naturally to me and that I’m a very outspoken and opinionated, confident person, but that’s something that I’ve really had to work on. Every time I post something that’s quite opinionated, that’s coming from a place of me having to push my boundaries to do it. The more I push myself to do it, the more comfortable I feel doing it.

You’re using your art as therapy, but then you’re also releasing it as therapy.

I think a lot of my art, too, comes from a place of anger which is typically pretty stamped out of women. We’re not allowed to be angry because an angry woman is a bitch…

We’re hysterical.

Yes! There are so many angry stereotypes of what an angry woman is and I’ve been called a bitch so many times, I honestly couldn’t even count it. The situations when I was being called a bitch— I wasn’t being a bitch—I was just standing up for myself. I wasn’t smiling and taking the bullshit…if you’re going to treat me like this, you’re out. I think that, in our culture, womens anger is…shamed. Everyone is [so concerned with] sprinkle some love and light. Like, no, I don’t want to sprinkle love and light…

…I want to fucking yell at somebody.

Yeah! 

One of my favourite things is when people are like oh, you must be on your period. Is that why you’re acting like this? And it’s like no no no! But, even if I am on my period, you’re just a cunt. 

Maybe I’m not being aggressive, maybe I’m just angry because we’ve been oppressed for so fucking long.

Maybe I’m acting this way because you’re a dick and you’re treating me like a piece of shit.

Not long ago, I’d posted something—it was one of my boys posts about toxic masculinity or something, and I had a boy pop into my inbox and he was saying “Oh hun, I just want to give you some advice. Don’t you think you’ll reach your target audience a little bit better if you were a bit nicer? Like, you want to get men on your side, don’t you?” I was literally sitting there like excuse me?! Don’t stamp all over my opinion—this is how I feel. 

But Bianca, you should be so grateful that he took the time out of his day to write you that message. Like, it’s so important. He did it out of the goodness of his heart, you should be grateful.

Fuck, people are annoying.

Even in our feminism, we’re taught to cater to men. Like, we can’t insult men or hurt their feelings. I’m not trying to insult men, I’m insulting the culture of how men are taught to behave. I love men! I have a lot of men [in my life] that I think are really wonderful people, but there are also a lot of behaviours where I’m just like no, that’s not right.