Stuart Sandford
Medium: Gallery Exhibition Documentation / Sculpture
Censored by: Instagram
On March 27, 2026 Stuart's account with over 20k followers was disabled from Instagram citing a violation of community standards against fraud and deception, following this post in which Sandford shares documentation of a group exhibition in Vietnam that he was involved in organizing. He was not offered the opportunity to appeal, and had not received a prior warning.
Stuart describes his efforts to re-activate his account as follows: "I reached out to the general support@instagram email as well as appeals@instagram and three folk who do/have worked at Meta that friends have connected me with and nothing. Someone suggested I go through the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] request and I tried that as well to no avail. My account has been verified for a couple of years now and I have a creator account and have spent money on ads for both Instagram and Facebook so this idea of fraud and deception is extraordinary."
After his account deletion was highlighted in a campaign by the organization ReproUncensored, a wave of public pressure mounted, and Stuart's account was suddenly reinstated without explanation on April 21. This incident shows the common event of account removal and reinstatement following public pressure and exposure, without explanation from the company.
Says Stuart: “To be denied access to 15 years plus of friends, family, myriad connections, patrons, and institutions around the world in one fell swoop is egregious behaviour. Artists work hard to build vital networks to disseminate work and, as much as we might not like it, social media and Instagram in particular, is still the first place most people look, meaning it’s a vital tool for artists' connections with collector[s] and sustaining a practice.”
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stuartsandford/