ARTS/CULTURE
FOKAL is the hub in Haiti where locals and international visitors from all walks of life -- artists, writers, citizens, activists-- come together to discuss the most pressing nation- and community-building issues, enjoy cutting edge artistic expressions, and share their ideas.
Brief History is part of a series produced by Carlos Motta between 2005 and 2009 that presents two chronologies of events in Latin America: one of U.S. interventions in the region since 1946, and one of the area’s leftist guerrilla movements. One side of the print outlines the interventions’ interconnected narratives in text; the other depicts two bloody handprints and the symbol of the Mano Blanco death squads from 1980s El Salvador.
Entre el 2004 y el 2014 se registraron 982 víctimas de ataque con ácido en Colombia. En el 41 por ciento de los casos, el agresor no fue identificado. El aumento de casos llevó a que en enero pasado se promulgara una ley que endurece los castigos contra ese flagelo y con la que se busca reducir al máximo esta situación en todo el país.
Haiti is a conservative society where Roman Catholicism shapes many of its social norms. Patriarchal norms, says Haitian feminist Pascale Solages, co-founder and general coordinator of feminist organization Nègès Mawon, have informed its strict views on abortion. In Haiti, women can’t legally access voluntary abortions. Doctors can’t perform them unless the woman’s life is in danger.
Covenant House has started a ‘Sleep Out’ movement that shines light on the youth homelessness crisis and raises funds for young people who seek shelter. "Covenant House empowers young people to overcome homelessness and trafficking by providing them with safe housing, food and clothing, and relentless support. Sleep Out events are held for people who want to join the movement as they give up their bed for one night in NYC.
In 1995, Bogota was a chaotic city. Among others, it presented high ranges of homicides, delinquency, corruption, no sense of belonging, traffic chaos and financial problems.
Artists in Rio de Janeiro have staged a pop-up street show to protest against the closure by the new far-right state government of an exhibition because of a performance attacking dictatorship-era torture.
A well-known advocate for the poor in Puerto Rico was released from jail Thursday evening after a San Juan judge dismissed charges stemming from his arrest earlier in the day during a protest against the island government's response to the coronavirus crisis.
Art has the power to move our imaginations and bodies, transforming the emotional and physical spaces we share. It has the power to build and transform social relations and to bring about equity and justice.
It was October 31st, 2012, when a new artist appeared on social media. In a series of video clips, she proposed with a soft and slow speech that Peru hide its poverty. Her project consisted of installing vinyl pieces to avoid what she called "the visual pollution." She titled the project Don't be poor, be fashion(able).
At Carnival, Where Challenging Normal Is the Norm
By NADIA SUSSMAN and TAYLOR BARNES
New York Times MARCH 2, 2014
RIO DE JANEIRO — Standing high atop a truck rigged with speakers, André da Silva Lisboa cried out to hundreds of drummers, dancers and costumed revelers gathering in the sun-drenched avenue below.
“Carnival has arrived,” shouted Mr. da Silva Lisboa, 38, a samba singer. “Come to the streets! We’re freaking out!”
FloodNet was a conceptual artwork and a tool for online collective action.
Developed by the collective Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), it took the form of a Java applet that allowed users to send useless requests or personalized messages to a remote web server in a coordinated fashion, thereby slowing it down and filling its error logs with words of protest and gibberish—a kind of virtual sit-in.
"The walls of the streets of downtown Santiago are covered with stickers, art, words and posters.
The messages are varied and range from "Feminist power" to "All cops are bastards". They have taken over the walls of Zona Cero (Ground Zero), the name given to the area around Plaza de la Dignidad, where anti-government protests have been held - and at times brutally repressed by police - since 18 October.
A new exhibition at The Shed in New York is a colour-soaked, eye-opening look into Yanomami life – an Indigenous culture in the heart of the Amazon rainforest
FEBRUARY 13, 2023
TEXT: Violet Conroy
Born on June 30, 1902, in Mexico City, Leopoldo Méndez would become one of Mexico’s most significant and beloved graphic artists of the twentieth century. Méndez was one of eight children in a poor household. At a young age, Méndez used art as a means to bring joy to the Mexican community and attended the Academy of San Carlos located in Mexico City.
From 1995 to 1997, Colombian families reunited in front of the TV to watch Quac: El Noticero, a comedy newletter performed by the comedian Jaime Garzon and the actor Diego Leon Hoyos.
It has been the only space in which the Colombian society was allowed to see a well made newsletter about the reality of the country and their politicians from a comedy perspective.
A wall will go up in Washington Square Park on Sept. 7, but come down by the end of the day.
Called “Muro,” this wall will be the artist Bosco Sodi’s first public installation in New York, in partnership with Paul Kasmin Gallery. It will be more than 6 feet high and about 26 feet long, made with 1,600 clay timbers fired in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Italian street artist Blu was recently in Mexico to participate at the ManifestoMX Street Art Festival where he completed this intense and politically charged mural in opposition to the Mexican authorities.
“It might not seem that an act of public laundry could unsettle a president with a well-deserved reputation for inflexibility, corruption, and brutality. But mass washing ceremonies were a key element in getting rid of Peru’s unpopular president, Alberto Fujimori, after more than a decade in power.
El Antimuseo es un proyecto curatorial que questiona los mecanismos de legitimación del arte. El grupo considera su trabajo " el proceso social donde se produce el valor simbólico y económico de la obra de arte, así como en el análisis de la estructura y límites de la institución."
En las palabras de ANTIMUSEO:
For over 60 years, Colombia has been facing war between guerrilla groups, the State, paramilitary groups and drug dealers. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, raped, displaced and threaten by this armed conflict. The common trait of this tragedy has been the people being in the middle, the people that still today pay the consequences.
Spanish organization the ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk) releases a campaign that takes advantage of the process of lenticular printing to send an offer of help to abused children without alerting their abusers, even if they’re walking together.
Lenticular printing is a process that allows for different photos to be seen depending on the angle the image is viewed from.
A site-specific art intervention intended as a call to action in response to Brazil's water crisis. Strategically planned to coincide with UN World Water Day, Gota D'Agua gathered onlookers around an abandoned Olympic size swimming pool at the foot of Edificio Raposo Lopes, a towering luxury condominium building situated on a steep incline overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
Six months before Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, a group of Puerto Rican artists were invited to participate in a residency program in Miami by local art organizations. The artists were offered abandoned storefronts-turned-studios at a historic downtown mall, where they’d exhibit their work during Miami Art Week in December to engage an art world that often overlooks the island territory.