Interview by AXO | Originally published in She Zine, 2016 – Expanded for 2025

The Power of Pink: Soft, sincere, a little sly, and fully feminist

We first sat down with AY in 2016, before burnout became a buzzword and emotional labour got its own Wikipedia page. Her work felt like a quiet manifesto, scrawled in a diary you maybe shouldn’t read, but need to. It still does.

Her work delves into the complexities of ambivalence and vulnerability through various mediums, including illustration, animation, and writing. All in a pale pink hue with an intriguing blend of “cute and creepy” aesthetics and full of all the feels.

​Artistic Philosophy and Style

Her choice of the distinctive pink serves as a form of resistance against stereotypes that associate femininity with weakness and challenges societal norms, reclaims the colour’s power. Her art often portrays surreal, emotionally expressive figures accompanied by candid, handwritten text, creating a space for introspection and empathy.

Background and Career

​Ambivalently Yours holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Fine Arts and has over 18 years of experience in creative professions, including roles in fashion, graphic design, and animation. She began her artistic journey on Tumblr in 2011, responding to followers’ messages with personalized illustrations, which helped her build a supportive online community. She was and is a soft-hearted rebel behind dreamy, hand-scrawled illustrations that make being overwhelmed feel… oddly validating.

Her work has been exhibited internationally and featured in publications like Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Dazed, CBC, and Cosmopolitan. ​

Themes and Influences

Central to her art is the exploration of conflicting emotions and the transformative potential they hold. She draws inspiration from personal experiences, feminist questions, and online interactions, aiming to highlight the resistance and empathy that can arise from ambivalence. Her work often addresses themes such as identity, mental health, and societal expectations, encouraging viewers to embrace their complexities.

Beyond visual art, Ambivalently Yours co-founded the “Rebelliously Tiny” podcast and the Uncertainty Festival, which was held on April 5th in Prince Edward County in Ontario, platforms that further explore emotional and feminist themes. She also creates installations designed as safe spaces for emotional expression and community connection. Her collaborations span various industries, including fashion, music, and publishing. ​

Online Presence and Shop

You can explore her portfolio and shop for prints, apparel, and other merchandise on her official website. Although temporarily closed, you can also shop for Ambivalently Yours prints on Society 6. Additionally, she still maintains a very active presence on Instagram and Tumblr, where she shares her latest works and thoughts.

​A Decade of Tender Resistance

In the nearly ten years since our first interview, the world has undergone seismic shifts—social media platforms have risen and fallen, feminist discourse has evolved, and the art world has grappled with questions of authenticity and commercialization. Amidst this turbulence, Ambivalently Yours has remained a steadfast presence, offering a sanctuary for those navigating the complexities of emotion, identity, and resistance.

We had hoped to reconnect for a fresh conversation for this issue, but life—like emotions, like deadlines—remains messy. So instead, we’re honouring the original exchange. The words still hum with relevance. The pink still punches. The feelings? Complicated, of course. But real.

Read on for a dose of radical softness from one of the voices who made us feel seen when we didn’t even know we were disappearing.

Appearing as printed in 2016

SZ:: How much can you tell me about yourself as just sort of a general introduction? I know that you don’t want to give too much away. Any info or details or fine. 

AY:: I’m a female identifying feminist artist based in Montreal, Canada. In a nutshell my work is full of feminist rants, ambivalent advice and an excessive but unapologetic use of the colour pink.

“My anonymity was a form of self-preservation, which in turn gave me the courage I needed to be more daring in my art.”
— Ambivalently Yours, Pink Things Magazine

SZ:: When did you start illustrating? Are there any specific artists/influences on your art that you would like to speak to?

AY:: I’ve been drawing my whole life. Drawing was always a safe place for me to hide, and a way to express things that verbal language could not. My biggest influences are my peers, other illustrators and artists, most of whom I’ve met on Tumblr or in other tiny emotional corners of the Internet. (I have a list on my Tumblr FAQ page: http://ambivalentlyyours.tumblr.com/faq)

SZ:: When did you start your tumblr blog? You discussed the response from readers. Can you speak to the most common types of questions that you receive?

AY:: I started my Tumblr on July 21, 2011. I was about to enter my last semester of grad school, I was studying feminism, social media and ambivalence and trying to find a way to put it all together and create a piece or a practice to present during my final exhibition. I never really thought my drawings were important but eventually I started posting ambivalent drawings and thoughts on my Tumblr, and people started responding to my work and began asking me questions. I received all kinds of questions, ranging from questions about love and romance, to feminism, sexual violence, identity, friendship… The underlying in question in most of the questions though was usually: are my feelings valid?

SZ:: Has there been a single communication that stands out in your mind?

AY:: Once in a while someone will write back to me two years later and tell me that the drawing I made for them meant a lot. This process of making drawings for strangers online can be so fragmented, like sending emotions out into a void without really knowing if anyone is really noticing. My online exchanges mean so much to me, I gained a lot of confidence and validation from them, so it’s nice to find out that my little practice isn’t just one sided.

“I spend a lot of time reading and re-reading their letters and try to relate their struggles to my own.”
— Ambivalently Yours, Coup de Main Magazine

SZ:: I’ve noticed that you participate and attend a good deal of social functions in Montreal. Do you have a favourite from over the years? Is there a certain org or collective that you would like to mention?

AY:: I table at a lot of markets and fairs, but my favourite is always Expozine in Montreal, because it is the one where there is the greatest concentration of amazing artists. It’s really inspiring to be able to share the space will all of them.

SZ:: You mention the “artist conundrum” of the want to create but the need for money to make the creation happen. I’ve heard about this struggle from a lot of artists and would love to hear your take.

AY:: I think it’s impossible to make a living as an artist in a capitalist society without having to make compromises from time to time. Sometimes that means doing work for companies whose values don’t 100% align with your own, or to sacrifice time you could have spent working on your own projects to work for others and gain a living wage. Right now I have a part-time job one day a week, I do several freelance illustration and graphic design contracts on the side, and I run my own shop of zine, pins, patches and t-shirts (which I print myself). This does not leave a lot of time and energy for me to work on all the other projects I mentioned above. It can get really exhausting and overwhelming. It can also really affect your self-worth to see people in other industries work reasonable hours and make a significantly larger salary than you. It’s not that I do any of my work for the money, but I can’t do any of my work without money. It’s a constant struggle and negotiation. I am not very good at balancing all of this, and almost completely burnt myself out in the last few months. I have to get better at saying no to things, but it’s hard to say no when you don’t know when the next payment opportunity will come along.

SZ:: What can you tell me about the Montreal feminist/LGTBQ+/artist scene? What has been your life experience, however you identify, living in your city? Pros/cons?

AY:: There is a large community in Montreal, and a lot of events and galleries are showcasing great artists. I’ve met a lot of my peers and collaborators through independent little markets and fairs. One of my favourite places in the city is the feminist bookstore called L’Euguélionne, which carries book and zines by female-identifying writers and hosts nice events.

SZ:: Do you have experience living w mental health? Can you speak to that experience at all?

AY:: I’ve always struggled with depression, and in more recent years I’ve started to struggle with anxiety. I’ve found a lot of empathy and validation online, especially on sites like Tumblr. I’ve also started going to therapy and try to treat myself better by sleeping more and moving more and not isolating myself too much. It’s a constant struggle, I’m still working through it. Making art helps a lot.

“I decided to make all my drawings light pink because people kept telling me not to… The use of pink is actually my rebellion against everyone who told me that pink was not a powerful colour.”
— Ambivalently Yours, Pink Things Magazine

SZ:: You have recently launched a podcast w. collaborators. What can you tell me about that project? Who would be a dream guest/collaborator? What would you discuss?

AY:: On the podcast we discuss the questions that people send to me online. In particular, we discuss some of the questions I don’t feel comfortable answering on my own. Right now I’m starting to prepare the second season. I will be reaching out to some of my favourite authors and artists, but it might be a long shot. I don’t want to say who, because I don’t want to jinx it. lol. The best episodes of the first season though were with the people who I am already close to because we are able to be more open with each other. There will be more of these conversations in season 2.

SZ:: You are pretty clear about your motivations, but can you get into that in a little more detail? What is your mission? What keeps you creating? What do you hope to accomplish?

AY:: One thing that really bothers me is how bad humans are at communicating with one another. No matter how many technological advances there are to help us stay connected, there is still so much that remains unsaid and that is misunderstood. Right now we hear a lot about social justice and feminism in mainstream media, but it is all very fragmented and often sensationalized and or over simplified. With my work, in all its shapes and sizes, I try to find ways to explore ideas in more open and complex ways. One of the reasons ambivalence is the main emotion motivating all of my work is that it is an emotion of several emotions, of mixed feelings. I think that if we made more room for our mixed feelings to coexist, for different opinions to coexist, for different types of people to coexist, we would be much better at communicating with and supporting one another.

“I express my most vulnerable emotions, by drawing the emotions of everyone else.”
— Ambivalently Yours, Artist Statement on ambivalentlyyours.com

SZ:: I think I mentioned in my introduction email about how personally affected I have been with the overwhelming number of women that have been coming forward lately about sexual crimes. I have always presented as feminist and initially kind of felt weird (offended?) when the same women that used to give me a hard time for using the “f” word started using the term themselves. Ive mostly gotten over it. I think I was mostly just upset at the girls who I went to high school with. 

Do you have any feelings about this? If not totally cool. (It may just be a personal hang up)

AY:: I totally get that. Feminism is on a high right now. It is talked about in mainstream media and

more and it was just named word of the year I think. A lot of people are jumping on board for the right reasons, a lot of people are jumping on board because it’s cool. While this popularity may be ultimately favourable to the movement, there is still a lack of diversity within those praised and included in the larger conversation. We have to be careful not to allow our ideas to get diluted and homogenized by the mainstream. Capitalist culture benefits from marketing Feminism as this one consumable thing (often a traditionally pretty white cis girl with her hands on her hips looking tough and wearing a quirky slogan tee), but for Feminism to be intersectional, we have to allow multiple versions of feminism to coexist. We have to listen to and value more narratives than just our own. Building feminist communities can be fun and fulfilling but it is never going to be easy; it’s work. The movement always has to keep evolving, questioning and redefining itself in order to avoid becoming exclusionary or meaningless.

SZ:: Do you want to end on a piece of feminist wisdom? Words of your own? From others?

AY:: “Your opponents would love you to believe that it’s hopeless, that you have no power, that there’s no reason to act, that you can’t win. Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.”

– Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

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Feeling Everything (and Letting It Be Enough)

When we first published this interview in 2016, it felt like we were cracking open a secret room inside the internet—a place where it was okay to say, “I’m not okay,” and have someone answer with art instead of advice. AY had already been Ambivalently Yours publishing content for 5 years by the time we had a chance to chat so when that door opened there was an avalanche of pale pink rebellion that poured out.

Revisiting it now, in a world that’s louder, harsher, and algorithmically indifferent, we’re reminded why AY’s work still cuts through the noise: because it whispers. Because it lets us feel the contradictions without demanding a clean resolution.

Maybe that’s the point.

AY has always made space for our most difficult, unsellable feelings. Her work doesn’t try to simplify what we’re going through—it just agrees to sit beside it. To hold its hand. To let it cry a little. Laugh a little. Breathe.

Maybe that’s why, all these years later, we’re still returning to her pages—not because they fix us, but because they make us feel a little less broken in the first place.

“If my art helps you cry, then it’s doing its job.”
— Ambivalently Yours, Coup de Main Magazine

Mission accomplished, tender rebel. Thank you for the tears. And the pink.