Ivan Vos aka Iviprofen

Digital Artist / Designer / Illustrator

Pronouns: He/Him

I was born in Chromatica on the 29th May of 2020, please trust me on this as I am very smart.

Jk. I was born in Cape Town on the 7th October 1993. I was born in a bit of a turbulent time because two weeks prior to my birth my dad passed away from cancer. I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for my mother to give birth to her only son who has the same name as her now dead husband. My mother says she found it difficult initially to be near me because of how much I reminded her of my father, but eventually she became the most important figure in my life as a child. My eldest sister, too, was a second mother to me, and they both played big roles in stimulating my creativity and identifying my talent and doing whatever they could in order to nurture it. I always had lots of drawing books, art kits and toys as a child. They really were the first ones who saw that art and creativity were my areas of comfort and happiness, so they allowed me to create stories and characters for them and encouraged me to put pencil crayon to paper whenever I was curious about the world around me.

Do you have any specific memories or stories about how you would express yourself as a child?

I was a very shy and introverted kid, and even though I try to fake confidence and bravado and have an outspoken persona as an adult, my place of comfort is definitely that quiet introverted space I’ve created for myself within my mind and my art. My happiest memories as a child were always me getting lost in my imagination and dreaming up narratives and characters to put either into words or drawings. But as happy as I was in that space I always felt kind of alone and awkward when it came to making friends.

Something specific that sticks in my mind that was a turning point for me was a moment in Grade 3. We had an assignment to create a drawing of all the different characters from our school concert that year, Disney Dreams, which was some weird MCU- type of play that threw together all the characters from all the different Disney cartoons for 2 hours. I spent so much time on those two A4 pieces of paper torn from the middle of my art book and when I finally showed it to my teacher she was damn amazed. So much so that she gave me a sticker for outstanding work and took me and my drawing to all the Grade 7 classes to show them the level of my drawing skills when I was only 9. Looking at it now, it doesn’t seem that impressive but I will forever remember that feeling of having people be amazed by something that I created. Having people take an interest in me instead of passing by me because I was that shy kid felt scary but exciting, and I wanted more of it. That feeling of having this artistic extension of myself validated and affirmed is what convinced me that I wanted to be an artist or work in a creative field when I grew up. From then on I just started working on my craft, my skills; and I started taking art seriously.

Would you consider any of those creations your first work(s) of art? 

I think I’d consider that specific piece my first work of art that I took super seriously. Well, as seriously as a 9-year-old can take something. I’ve always drawn and made art for as long as I can remember and I’d always create stories and characters for my family members and friends, so I don’t remember taking any of that very seriously because it was just fun for me. But definitely I’d say that was my first big “a-ha moment” where I realised ‘oh shit, you’re actually good at this and this thing you have that you do all the time and take for granted is actually something you can use to impress people and forge connections’, which was a REALLY exciting epiphany for an introverted shy kid to have. 

It’s very common for queer children to have difficult high school experiences- did you have a tough time at De Kuilen High School? If so, did you constantly feel as though you had to adapt to “fit in”?

Girl. Lol. I wouldn’t say I  was bullied the way I’ve seen some American gay kids get bullied in movies and media, but straight boys definitely made my life in high school unnecessarily difficult. As queer kids we already know we’re different even though we may not express it or have the language to identify what those differences are. Other kids in school pick up on that and use it against us to either make us conform or to have some sort of power over us. De Kuilen especially fosters a very unwelcoming space for queer kids to thrive because the people in charge are mostly white, cishet, male, conservative and Afrikaans. It didn’t help either that all of this external intolerance and negative attitude towards being gay was mixed in with my own internal struggle with coming to terms with my sexuality. It’s tough enough trying to figure out who the hell you are without having other people’s opinions flying through the air about why being gay is so bad and why they deserve God’s wrath.

I remember in Grade 8 hearing about a gay matric student who wasn’t allowed to bring his boyfriend on the grounds, and that De Kuilen was a ‘good Christian school’. That let me know just where exactly most of the staff and students stood with regards to homosexuality and from Grade 8-11, I tried my best to just fly under the radar and keep the secret that I was gay very, very close to my chest. I definitely tried to fit in by pretending to like girls and having girlfriends and be less flamboyant, but I eventually just got really tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

How did you foster the confidence to just be yourself unapologetically?

I just got to a point where I was tired of second guessing myself and feeling disgusting for not being like everyone else. I was tired of hating myself but the idea of coming out to loved ones was scary af because I didn’t know what their reactions would be like. Towards the end of my Grade 11 year, I started testing the waters by coming out one by one to my friends. Most of them had a reaction of “yeah duh, we knew and it's okay and we love you” but I remember I lost a few guy friends when I came out because of homophobia… their loss to be honest, lol.

I’ll never forget my unexpected and unplanned coming out to my mom. This was during the December holidays of 2010 and I invited my boyfriend at the time to come over for lunch. I introduced him as my ‘friend’, of course, but I think my mom picked up right away that there was more going on. As dumb teenagers do, we went to my room and I closed the door but not all the way and we started making out on my bed. Neither of us heard the door open and by the time we did my mom had been witness to her 17- year- old son on top of his matric boyfriend. All I remember is her shouting that ‘we needed to have a very serious conversation’ and my boyfriend needed to go home asap. We laugh about it now and I’m kind of grateful it just happened because I feel like I would have taken ages to come out to her but back then I literally saw my life flash before my eyes.

You initially studied fashion design at CPUT , and for your 2015 graduate collection, “Dionysus”,  you interrogated fragile masculinity through a homoerotic gaze. Can you elaborate on that rationale and collection? 

I actually started out focusing on womenswear design strictly for about the first 2 years at uni because I had this perception that menswear was boring and couldn’t be daring. Ironically, I think that mindset served me well because that’s exactly what I tried to interrogate in my graduate collection. I had done a homoerotic- themed tailoring design project in my 2nd year and I found that I really enjoyed that and wanted to do something similar for my grad collection because I have a tendency to inject sex into whatever I’m creating. I was also the only one in my class who was going to do a full menswear collection so that already set me apart from everyone else, and on top of that I knew that doing sexy, visibly queer menswear would grab everyone’s attention because, well, sex sells doesn’t it?

What sparked the theme of that collection was me asking why there wasn’t a one piece equivalent of a dress in a man’s formal closet. Women put on a dress and call it a day, whereas men have a shirt, trouser and a jacket that they need in order to complete an outfit; not to mention, optionals like waistcoats etc.

Additionally, I wanted to investigate what it would look like to twist formal menswear into something more queer by objectifying the male figure and incorporating elements of womenswear and lingerie, as you can see in the third look of my collection where I gave a formal jacket the lower half and construction of a corset. It's also the reason you see a lot of harnesses and mesh fabrics within the collection as I really wanted to give it a vamped up, sexy feel and make you question whether it was supposed to be formal wear or lingerie. It was sort of a playful middle finger to the stereotype that men being sexy is something cringe-y or funny.

I know you also did a number of fashion internships, but you are not currently pursuing fashion full-time at the moment. Why is that industry so difficult to crack?

It was a mixture of things for me. Fashion school became less and less enjoyable for me as I continued my studies because of me not meeting my outrageous expectations for myself, how far away I lived from campus and had to commute every single day, a lack of spare funds for study expenses excluding my tuition and my grandparents falling ill around this time and just a general feeling of disillusionment with where and what I chose to study. All of those things left me with a lot of self-doubt and negative feelings towards fashion and the possibility of being in the industry.

It just felt like one blow after the other and I wasn’t able to catch my breath. In my graduate year I won an annual competition my faculty ran in collaboration with a big retailer in South Africa where the prize was a trip to London. A general unspoken rule was that the winners of this competition would usually end up as paid interns within the company, but the following year after I had interviewed with them I was passed over for other candidates they felt were more qualified. That was a major blow to my self -confidence and ego as I felt like I had that position in the bag due to the fact that I had been personally chosen by them. I feel like the fashion industry in South Africa is already so tiny and there are only so many positions to be filled that it is extremely tough to even just get on to the pathway leading to the door into the industry. I tried applying for entry-level jobs with other retailers, but I was turned down, too, and this constant rejection combined with my ever-growing disillusionment with fashion in general made me give up trying to put myself out there as a fashion designer.

It’s obvious from your background and career trajectory that design and illustration are two of your creative pillars. When did “Iviprofen” come into the picture?

In late 2016, I ended up working at said retailer’s flagship store as a visual merchandiser/sales assistant in an attempt to gain some sort of direction in my life and as a way for me to show that I really wanted to work for their company and was willing to climb any sort of ladder if need be, but at the same time I started uploading my drawings to Instagram as a way of making a name for myself as an artist. My earliest stuff were all hand drawn and scanned into my laptop because I didn’t have a drawing tablet at the time and the subject matter wasn’t as homoerotic as it is now. It didn’t get much attention because no one knew who I was and I was really bad at social media at the time. But Iviprofen came to life when some of my online friends told me that my black and white drawings at the time had a Tom of Finland-like quality to them, and they suggested I take the plunge and fully delve into that erotic side of queer art I had always loved and been inspired by. One of them also suggested that I make fan art of gay men and gay porn stars on Instagram with large followings in order to maximise my exposure and grow my account.

I think Iviprofen was really born out of a desire to be exceptional and be seen after having constant rejection and feeling like I wasn’t good enough in my personal life. I knew that my illustration skills were amazing already, I knew that sex sells, I knew I wanted to do stuff that was sexual and provocative and I had the balls to do so, I knew it would cost me virtually nothing to execute and I didn’t have to rely on anyone else to give me this position. I had nothing to lose so I said fuck it - might as well start doing erotic art of really hot gays.

Would you say you have a specific mission with the type of work you create? And what are some of the misconceptions about your work?

I think I’m still in the process of figuring out what exactly I want my work to stand for. My art changes constantly because I’m changing constantly. You can’t divorce yourself, your identity and experiences from your creative truth. But I just want my art to be a giant playground and celebration of sexuality, nudity, creativity, gender fluidity and queer beauty - and of course bubble butts haha. I like creating happy, playful art of the sexual side of the gay experience because I feel like sex and body image is something that is still wrapped up in a lot of shame and negativity that many of us as gay men have to confront and unlearn. I think this is also why there’s a lot of pink colours, celestial and ethereal superhuman elements in my art, because to me that represents joy, euphoria and a release from the pain of reality and our experiences? Which, I’m just realising now, is what ibuprofen does to the body.

I have a much more liberal mindset when it comes to sex and nudity than most people, and that shows in my art, but that’s only one facet of myself. I think this causes people to think that I’m some sort of nymphomaniac deviant who can’t create anything without it being sexual or erotic and that’s such a bizarre idea to me because I don’t even have as much sex as people assume I do, and also gay sex and male nudity isn’t a dirty or shameful thing to me. There is beauty in flesh and fornication. Body parts, muscles, skin… They’re there to be celebrated. Have you even seen butts? Butts are fucking beautiful, man. I think they’re the most beautiful part of the body, that’s why I put so much focus on glutes in my art.

A common criticism, and rightfully so, of genderbend and/or gay erotic art is that it still mostly reflects the “white Insta gay” aesthetic- would you agree that we still have a long way to go in terms of representation?  

Oh, absolutely. White is still seen as the default and the ideal in every aspect of global society, not just gay society. But it's even more evident within the Instagay sphere that white men are the pinnacle of desire. Just compare the follower counts of white or lightskin gay porn stars/fitness models/drag queens/influencers to those of their black and POC counterparts. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that white/european features are the epitome of beauty and I’ve seen that first hand with the amount of likes and engagement my art gets. When I draw black men I get considerably less likes than when I draw white/white passing men. This is why I don’t blame some artists for sticking to a largely white aesthetic as their output. It’s wrong and we should do better to be more inclusive, but Instagram is a numbers game and I don’t fault anyone for playing it and churning out the same reductive shit if followers are that important to them. For me, I prefer to do art that makes me happy rather than what feeds into likes and I’ve had to overcome that obsession with having x amount of followers or x amount of likes in order to feel validated as an artist.

With regards to the genderbend art that I absolutely love doing - it's kind of heartbreaking when I’m looking for iconic female characters in video games or pop culture to genderbend and an overwhelming majority of them are white or white-passing. It just shows that on a global scale we have a long way to go in terms of representing everybody in art, pop culture and media and I’m glad we’re living in an age of witnessing marginalised groups of people being celebrated and having their faces and bodies seen and exposed to the world. If I can be a part of that movement by doing something as small as drawing a black man for every white man I draw - you bet your big ass I’ll be doing so.

South Africa is still very much a conservative country, so do you find that your work is often just dismissed as “pornographic” and therefore the artistic merit isn’t recognised?

I have experienced confusion and misconceptions from friends and family as to why I choose to create erotic art and present my art persona in such a provocative manner. They can’t seem to get past the fact that its sex and nudity on display to focus on just how much effort and skill it takes to do what I do, so it’s often just categorised as something to be consumed for sexual gratification rather than a legitimate form of art that takes experience to do well. I’ve been recognised and loved by some major figures in the queer community, and Grindr even featured my art on their social media once, but to people outside queer circles, it’s as if I’m pumping out masturbation aids and obscene material. I make “gross horny toons”, as one cisgender heterosexual local told me once.

I’ve also been told by people within the art and design community that I might want to tone down the content and nature of my work in order to appeal to corporate clients and jobs. I don’t even view my work as being overtly erotic, but rather just queer art. But South African society still views anything to do with being gay or queer as being sexually deviant and disgusting. It can be really difficult and annoying to stay true to your artistic integrity and vision when you’re being told to tone yourself down in order to be more palatable to a mainstream audience you don’t even really care about in the first place. It’s so weird because I don’t even think my work is that extreme, but not everyone views the world like I do. As I’ve said to straight men before -  my work is not for you, and never will be.

You’ve also spoken openly about your struggles with mental health. You often hear people saying that the antidote to anxiety and/or depression is to work on something you love, but I don’t think many people understand how incapacitating it can be… would you mind sharing your experience(s)? 

It’s sad boi hours now, huh? Hahaha. The common perception is that artists can use ‘sadness’ as a way of creating great, or even their best art. That may be true for some, but certainly not the case for everyone. I just got to a place where everything (past, present and future) became immensely overwhelming in my life that it just took a complete turn for the worst. This was around 2018 when I really started feeling depression creep up on me because I had broken up with my boyfriend of just over a year and had to move back home. I also left my day job to try to make a living from my art but that wasn’t a great idea as it wasn’t reliable income and art started feeling more like a chore than a joy to do. Everything just felt like it was regressing and like my life was imploding on itself and I just wanted things to stop for a bit. So sleeping all day and avoiding my responsibilities became my best friends in that hole I fell into.

But the thing is, when you’re sleeping most of your life away and avoiding stuff you still feel super bleak about things. It became really tough for me to create art or even finish any drawing. Initially, I thought I was being lazy and had a creative block but eventually I realised something bigger was preventing me from having motivation and focus. That was scary for me because art was always my therapy and my source of joy, but instead it became this thing that filled me with so much dread and sadness every time I sat down in front of my laptop. I felt physically incapable of drawing, and that was hell.

Now, I’m at least aware of the hole I’m in and I’m trying to get myself out of it. It’s an everyday battle to wanna disappear into my bed and avoid everything and I’m not always successful but I try my best. I’m taking it day by day and I’m trying to not be so hard on myself for not drawing. Separating my self- worth from my creative output has been a major help in that. Having a support system helps a lot. So do anti-depressants. I understand why gays love their pills so much lol.

How do you envision your legacy?

Gay. Pink. Naked. Lots of bubble butts. Lots of male lingerie. Preferably having aided in broadening the scope of what masculinity is.

I don’t hope for much but I hope that Iviprofen makes other people feel that their bodies, their sexual interests and interests in general are valid. I sound like a broken record but I genuinely believe that nudity and sex, especially of the queer kind, are things to be celebrated, cherished and immortalised in art. I try to be unashamed, outrageous and playful in my work, and I hope that inspires other queer people to live their lives without shame.

I’m not perfect and I’m still on my artistic journey and growing everyday and learning from my mistakes and figuring out my way forward. But I do know that I want to keep making this kind of art for as long as I can. Maybe even have a few art books published of all my art, especially my genderbends. Publishers, if you’re reading this, hit your boy up! 

Lastly- you describe yourself as a “part-time princess” quite a lot- can you elaborate on that?

Don’t take everything you read on my social media so seriously! I’m such a troll. It just sounded cute in the moment and I love being dramatic online. I’m a Libra after all.

Get in touch with Iviprofen via Email, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

No images in the feature may be copied, reproduced or redistributed without permission from the artist.