Whose Chinatown? Examining Chinatown Gazes in Art, Archives, and Collections, brings together an art history of Chinatowns and their communities by historical and contemporary Canadian artists such Emily Carr, Unity Bainbridge, Yucho Chow, Fred Herzog, Paul Wong, Mary Sui Yee Wong, Morris Lum, and aiya哎呀, among others.
A performance of empathy, democracy and power, created fresh in each city where it is presented, with local artists, activists, government officials and other citizens.
The project takes as its departure point the formal structures of local government. An emphasis on the formal elements helps us engage, play, critique and enliven, among other things.
In May, 2013, Russian performance artist Petr Pavlovsky wrapped his body, nude, in barbed wire and lay outside the St. Petersburg legislative assembly. The act was in protest of restrictions imposed on freedom of speech and assembly. Police officers were forced to attempt to disengage him from the wire. After medical officials also arrived, Pavlovsky refused to be taken to the hospital and was brought to jail, where he was held for several weeks.
Street harassment is one of the most pervasive forms of gender-based violence and one of the least legislated against. Comments from “You’d look good on me” to groping, flashing and assault are a daily, global reality for women and LGBTQ individuals. But it is rarely reported, and it’s culturally accepted as ‘the price you pay’ for being a woman or for being gay.
Together with a group of homeless New Yorkers, Wodiczko constructed the Homesless Vehicle as an instrument of survival for urban nomads. A modified shopping cart that facilitates refundable bottle and can collection, it also provides temporary shelter. As a house on wheels intended for New York City sidewalks, the Homeless Vehicle embodies Wodicko’s practice of ‘Interrogative Design’.
As the New Museum’s 2023–24 Artist-in-Residence, Camilo Godoy will create a performance exploring movement, breathing, and mourning practices. The title of his residency is borrowed from an embroidered work made by the queer Paraguayan artist Feliciano Centurión in 1995, the year before he died of AIDS-related complications.
On August 14th 2014 several prominent statues within the city centre and the southern suburbs of Cape Town got redressed in green blankets, equipped with miner gear or carrying grocery bags. The statues – mainly of which represent colonial figures – were redressed in light of what has come to be known as the Marikana Massacre: the shooting of 34 miners by the local police force of Marikana, South Africa on August 16th, 2012.