Main Gallery

Femme art witch blends activism into work to embrace Punjabi heritage
Practitioner:
Khushboo Kataria Gulati
Date:
Feb 16 2016
Khushboo Kataria Gulati lights an off-white candle and passes the flame to a switch of sage, casting a spell around the purple-lit room as she places paintbrush to canvas. The herbaceous smoke billows around her, time suspends and her paint strokes create a scene of three multicolored faces surrounded by plants.
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2
Slashing the Rokeby Venus
Practitioner:
Mary Raleigh Richardson, WSPU
Date:
Mar 10 1914
On March 10, 1914, Mary Richardson slashed Velasquez's "Rokeby Venus" with a small axe during public hours at the National Gallery in London. A militant suffragette protesting the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes in prison (and the Cat and Mouse Act which released the starving women only until they were slightly healthier only to imprison them again), Richardson released this statement after her arrest:
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3
Queering the Map
Practitioner:
Lucas LaRochelle
Date:
Jan 1 2017
Queering the Map is a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space.
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0
The AIDS Memorial Quilt
Practitioner:
Cleve Jones
Date:
Oct 11 1987
Cleve Jones's powerful vision for memorializing those lost to AIDS was realized in October 1987 in Washington D.C. It showcased the artistic contributions of people who'd lost loved ones to the virus from a number of US metropolitan centers. The quilt has continued to grow for the nearly 40 years since. By 1992, the AIDS Memorial Quilt included panels from every state and 28 countries.
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10
Ice Watch
Practitioner:
Olafur Eliasson
Date:
Dec 11 2018
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has extracted 30 blocks of glacial ice from the waters surrounding Greenland and placed them in public spaces across London, where they will be left to melt. Called Ice Watch, the temporary installation is meant to serve as a visual reminder of the impact of climate change on the environment.
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4
The powerful images of Hong Kong’s protests
Practitioner:
Hong kong residents
Date:
Jun 1 2019
The face of Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam is falling apart: an eyeball has fallen out of its socket and the flesh of her left chin has been ripped off. Black-clad protesters in yellow hard hats are standing on top of her head, hanging a banner with ‘Hong Kong add oil’ on her forehead and shouting into her ear with a megaphone.
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1
This area will be photographed
Practitioner:
Laura Napier
Date:
Oct 11 2015
"This area will be photographed" is a public performance of implied photographic consent, inspired by Google's street view and satellite surveillance. Posted signs and handbills alerted the public present in Union Square, New York, NY that a photograph would be taken of the area at a precise time.
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2
Howitcouldbedifferent.org - a wikipedia of ideas for improvement and social change
Practitioner:
Hicbd
Date:
Apr 24 2013
Have you ever wanted to see current or potential innovations for poverty or the environment without having to do a lot of researching or reading? Have you ever thought of an idea and wanted to tell the world about it and get feedback? Howitcouldbedifferent.org was founded for these purposes - to enable people to easily see, share, and suggest ideas in different categories.
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1
SWIMMING CITIES OF SWITCHBACK SEA
Practitioner:
Swoon Studio
Date:
Sep 7 2008
TROY, N.Y. — Three loud blasts from a steam whistle screamed out as the rain drizzled on the riverbank here. And the fleet of seven eclectic handmade ships slowly moved away.
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1
Mind Over Media
Practitioner:
Media Education Lab
Date:
Nov 1 2017
Mind Over Media is a crowdsourced educational platform that contains diverse examples of contemporary propaganda on a wide range of social, political, economic and environmental topics.
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4
Belgium Disappears
Practitioner:
Jason Applebaum
Date:
Dec 15 2006
For a brief moment on Wednesday night it appeared that Belgium had disappeared. The main French language television station hoodwinked the country into thinking that it had split in two when it reported that Flanders had issued a unilateral declaration of independence.
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0
menstrual pad mutual aid boxes
Practitioner:
Chinese University Students
Date:
Oct 30 2020
Since 2020, university students across China have launched a grassroots initiative to combat menstrual stigma by placing “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in campus restrooms. These boxes, often accompanied by signs reading “Take one if you need it, donate if you can,” provide free sanitary pads to anyone caught off guard by their period—offering both practical relief and a symbolic challenge to the cultural silence surrounding menstruation.
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5
50 People in 40 Square Meters
Practitioner:
Contemporary Art Center, Skopje
Date:
Feb 6 2016
In a case of voter fraud, an investigation revealed that the party in power had won fifty votes from the residents of a single apartment. A group of activists reproduced the apartment in a downtown square and invited 50 people inside. The action took just one part of the case, literally brought it into three dimensions, and showed the absurdity that this could ever be legitimate.
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9
Female Frequency
Practitioner:
Dani Mari et al
Date:
Mar 1 2015
Female Frequency is a collective dedicated to empowering women & girls through the creation of music that is entirely female generated. "We are making an album created entirely by females, start to finish -- this means that all writing, instrumentation, arrangement, performance, production, engineering, mixing, mastering, marketing and visual media will be carried out by females."
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2
Feminists Paper Paris With Stark Posters Decrying Domestic Abuse
Practitioner:
Les Colleuses/ The Gluers
Date:
Sep 11 2020
A widespread but illegal campaign by a group calling itself “the Gluers” uses posters to denounce violence against women. It has become an effective — and ubiquitous — tool to raise awareness. On a recent mild night, a squad of four young women wandered through a peaceful neighborhood in eastern Paris, armed with a bucket of glue, a paintbrush and backpacks loaded with posters.
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5
Oxycontin Protest at the Met
Practitioner:
Nan Goldin and Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (PAIN)
Date:
Mar 10 2018
The US artist Nan Goldin has staged her first public protest since she launched her activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), shaming members of the Sackler family who have profited from the sale of Oxycontin and institutions that have accepted their philanthropy.
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2
And babies.
Practitioner:
Ronald Haerble and the Art Worker's Coalition
Date:
Dec 26 1969
Ronald Haeberle took a color photograph of the bloody corpses of men, women, and children after the Mai Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War in in March 1968, initially publishing it in Life magazine. Later the image was used by the Art Worker's Coalition to create the infamous poster, "And babies.," which superimposed "Q: And babies? A: And babies" in red letter across the top and bottom of the image.
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3
Stop Telling Women to Smile
Practitioner:
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
Date:
Aug 8 2020
publicly displayed posters feature the portraits of women, along with a quote relaying their experiences with street harassment. Fazlalizadeh hopes the captions speak directly to offenders by placing the posters outside in public spaces where harassment happens.
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2
Double Happiness
Practitioner:
Didier Faustino
Date:
Jan 1 2009
Architect Didier Faustino strips a billboard down to its skeleton, repurposes it as a swing set, and names it Double Happiness. This "urban reactivation device" needs to become a world wide phenomenon. Imagine billboard swing sets waiting at every destination. The climb looks worth the view.
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4
Linha Vermelha - Red Line
Practitioner:
Academia Cidadã - Citizenship Academy
Date:
Dec 5 2017
Linha Vermelha was created in 2016 by the non-profit organization Academia Cidadã (Citizenship Academy). At that time there were fifteen active contracts for oil and gas drilling and we were inspired by the “Red Line Action” in Paris, during COP21 and decided to create this campaign.
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