Melissa is a down-to-earth, friendly woman in her 50s, and it seems that she has always met life with a certain amount of courage. She grew up on another continent, and after early motherhood, then divorce and a first career in business, she moved to the UK with her second husband. She then built another career working with survivors of domestic violence, before setting up a climate emergency centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Young Japan: For too long, Japan's youth have been a silent minority. Now, on the eve of a crucially important general election, they seek a bigger voice in forging the future of their aging nation
It’s women’s history month, and your favorite radical feminist avengers want you to go ape. The Guerrilla Girls have been making noise about gender and racial inequality in the art world since 1985. Fighting discrimination with a sense of humor and their signature faux fur, these masked feminists continue to challenge major museums to spotlight more women and artists of color.
Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain.
After eight days of fall/winter New York Fashion Week, the most prominent trend—pervading both the runways and streets—has been social and political activism. To outsiders, New York Fashion Week may seem trivial in a time of more pressing news, but beyond being an escape, it’s a representation of how art can comment on social and political issues.
In early 2016, I began paying attention to reports about the incredible number of unarmed black people being killed by the police. The posts on social media deeply disturbed me, but one in particular brought me to tears: the killing of Alton Sterling in my hometown Baton Rouge, La. This could have happened to any of my family members who still live in the area. I felt furious, hurt and hopeless.
The Haitian Creole word "konbit" denotes the idea of similar talents joining together to work towards a common goal. The founders — a group of photographers, educators, and artists — came up with the idea for Fotokonbit a few years ago to "empower Haitians to tell their own stories and document their community", but it was the 2010 earthquake that gave the group new urgency.
This action took place on the Saturday after the 2020 US election when Joe Biden was named the president elect. While many were celebrating, the Stonewall Protests led up to march and remind ourselves + others that our fight was still far from over, and that the Democratic party is not a savior of marginalized populations. There were moments of celebration during the march, we paused in Soho and had a dance circle.
Naked members of the animal rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) impersonated cellophane-wrapped meat packages in a pro-vegan demonstration demonizing the way the meat industry treats animals in front of a Vancouver slaughterhouse.
With the aim to confuse and 'stir up the shit', Brainstone built and launched a website that looked like the beloved Tea Party had given up on its right-wing clowns and finally supported Obama.
The site drew lots of twitter, blogger. social media and news site reaction. Members of Brainstone were frequently requested to conduct interviews and spent tons of hours responding to emails.
When Rage Against the Machine arrived in Philadelphia to play their 15-minute set as part of Lollapalooza ’93, the Los Angeles band knew they had a problem. Zack de la Rocha, the band’s incendiary frontman who was as outspoken on the mic as he was loud in his cadence, had no voice. A month of playing shows on a tour to support their self-titled debut album released the previous November had taken its toll on the frontman’s vocal cords.
At noon today, a group of artists and activists including members of the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (known as G.U.L.F.) unfurled a large parachute in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, demanding to meet with a member of the institution’s board of trustees to discuss the labor conditions at its Abu Dhabi site.
In May, the horrific mass shooting in Isla Vista, CA, triggered national conversations about violent misogyny. After some Twitter users began using the hashtag #NotAllMen to defensively derail the conversation, the hugely popular hashtag #YesAllWomen emerged, getting tweeted over 1 million times within just a few days.
February 29, 2012
The Kansas City Star
By Jessica Blakeborough
The chickens have been granted a stay of execution.
City codes prevent Amber Hansen, a Lawrence artist, from displaying and then butchering chickens for an art project, a city official says.
And that has animal activists rejoicing.
Asian Americans standing up for themselves, the Black Lives Matter movement, and their home: New York City
In 2020, as COVID-19 flared through New York City and NYC hospitals saw a spike of nearly 200,000 patients, Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) faced an added threat: blame, racism, and xenophobia.
“ARTICULO 6: narratives of gender, strength and politics” is an activist design project that aims to raise awareness about the case of forced sterilizations implemented during the government of Alberto Fujimori in Peru.
On March 21, just days after eight people, including six women of Asian descent, were killed in the Atlanta-area shootings, thousands gathered at Columbus Park in Manhattan for a rally against anti-Asian violence. Activists took turns addressing the surge in hate crimes and hate incidents toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, when an 8-year-old stepped onto the stage. “Stop the hatred!” Chance yelled into the mic.
Growing up in extreme poverty under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Mam was sold into sexual slavery when she was 12, eventually ending up in a Phnom Penh brothel where she endured unimaginable daily torture and rape. After being made to watch as another girl, her best friend, was murdered, Mam escaped and was helped out of Cambodia by a French aid worker.