The creative fusion of art and activism in urban spaces has propelled the British collective Led by Donkeys into the spotlight, garnering millions of views for their interventions on social media. Their critical visual occupations - whether billboard messages during the day or large-scale projections at night - raise a compelling question: which medium holds the greater persuasive power?
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and other top Western officials gathered on March 2 for a London summit to discuss support for Kyiv.
On your doorstep, or in their neighbourhood hotel, or the local tea shop, the media bring to you a world full of troubles. But along with that, they’ve had some consideration for your funny bone and give you a daily dose of laughter by publishing the work of some of the finest cartoonists in the country. “
On May 5 – World Cartoonist Day – here’s bringing you a glimpse of your favourite illustrators and what keeps them going.
EP Unny
Daniel Hewson describes the use of protest posters and the work of collective, Burning Museum, and artist, Faith47, in the Fees Must Fall movement taking place in South Africa:
They’re real fashion police: Fed up with sloppy cops, the NYPD has moved to update its dress code, banning shorts on transit beats and white turtlenecks while on patrol.
The department’s updated style guide, set to take effect next month, also instructs patrol officers not to wear tactical cargo pants and reinforces longstanding guidance including a ban on shoelaces that are not black.
The KLE - Kit de Libertad de Expresión (or Freedom of Speech Kit), is a portable digital device that allows people from all over the world to participate to remote protests by sending and displaying text messages in public space. The interactive banner is (unsurprisingly) inspired by the record number of social protests that took place in Spain in 2011. It is estimated that over 23.000 demonstrations have been organised that year around the country.
April 2nd, 2016, organized by members of the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power faction in London, five activists stormed London's Gilead Pharmaceutical offices and frantically disrobed to reveal painted backs spelling out the word 'Greed." About 30 other activists rallied outside the building.
JAY SHELLS DROPS “RAP QUOTES,”
HIS MOST SITE-SPECIFIC STREET ART PROJECT YET
By Aymann Ismail | March 25, 2013 - 12:30PM
After schooling New Yorkers on etiquette via numerous unsanctioned interventions, artist Jay Shells channeled his love of hip hop music and his uncanny sign-making skills towards a brand new project: “Rap Quotes.”
A young man melting into a puddle of himself is something you don’t see everyday, much less in a busy public square. Yet this humourous but surprisingly effective spectacle is the latest effort by the Red Cross of Argentina to raise awareness about climate change.
On December 2014 I've been artist in residence at MANY MINI RESIDENCY a short-term residency program organized by Sarrita Hunn and Ryan Thayer and hosted by GYB BYG in Mexico City. During my 12 hour residency I’ve worked on the case of the 43 students from Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa who went missing while in the custody of Iguala’s police force in September 2014.
In 1982, for documenta 7, Beuys proposed a plan to plant 7000 oaks throughout the city of Kassel, each paired with a basalt stone. The 7000 stones were piled up on the lawn in front of the Museum Fridericianum with the idea that the pile would shrink every time a tree was planted. The project, seen locally as a gesture towards green urban renewal, took five years to complete and has spread to other cities around the world.
From Public Delivery:
"He calls his work Support, which involves two giant hands rising from a canal to support the building that houses Ca’ Sagredo Hotel. The idea is to depict that the sculpture is helping Venice. It also symbolizes humankind’s capability to destroy the world and an equal ability to save the world too."
The image is stark. And shocking.
A black man, his ankles shackled, his head hanging away from the viewer, stands in relief on a field of white. Chains stretching to the image's borders on the left and right pull his arms taut. Fourteen crimson marks crosshatch his back. Within the dark fabric that frames "86 Lashes to Go," a small rectangle is labeled simply "salt."
Olafur Eliasson , the Danish-Icelandic artist. Some of his exceptional artworks focus on climate and environmental changes. In 2003, he installed The Weather Project , which remains one of Tate Modern’s popular installations. He is also known for his freestanding waterfall in Versailles , his installation in which he installed a riverbed in a museum , and his gigantic rainbow installation in Aarhus, Denmark.
This year, Bethlehem is sombre and quiet. There is no Christmas tree and there are no holiday lights or tourists to see them.
Instead, the city of Jesus’s birth – which is in the middle of a war zone – is marking Christmas with a powerful and poignant message: solidarity with Palestine.
Tiny Pricks is a public art project created and curated by Diana Weymar. Contributors from around the world are stitching Donald Trump’s words into textiles, creating the material record of his presidency and of the movement against it. Tiny Pricks Project holds a creative space in a tumultuous political climate.
Daniel Arzola, a digital artist and activist originally from Maracay, Venezuela, began his series, 'No Soy Tu Chiste' ('I Am Not A Joke') in 2013 intent on combating the stereotypes and cruelty so often facing LGBT identifiers; youth in particular. The project went viral in 2014, around the same time it teamed up with the It Gets Better Project based in the United States.
The Rev Lucy Winkett is having trouble sleeping. This is because her church on Piccadilly has decided to erect a full-size copy of the Israeli separation barrier to block off her Christopher Wren church. And because she lives above the shop, the grim presence of this temporary structure is with her all the time. "Politics aside, living beside the 26ft wall is having a curious effect on those who are here.
The son of an exiled political dissident, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s work is inherently political. Since 1995 Ai Weiwei has been traveling the world, photographing himself flipping off iconic monuments of power in his Study of Perspective series.