from "Laugh, O Revolution: Humor in the Egyptian Uprising" by Anna Louie Sussman, in 2011.
Revolutions can be messy. They can be tragic. As long as the Internet is working, they can be tweeted. And, as Egyptians demonstrated during their 18 days of protest, they can also be funny.
The Monument Quilt is a large quilt that serves as a memorial for survivors of rape and abuse. It contains over 3,000 stories from individuals who have experienced gender-based violence, and allows visitors to add their own stories by writing, painting, or stitching onto red fabric. The project took place over a span of six years, during which the organizers traveled to 49 states and 33 cities in the U.S.
Last November, when you Googled the phrase “ugly Black woman,” Vanessa Rochelle Lewis’s photograph was the second to come up.
“Which I’m offended by,” says Lewis, a Bay Area–based artist and writer, “since I’m an Aries and I like to be number one in everything.”
Digital art platform Kinfolk has launched its New York City-wide participatory exhibition Signature Series, the initiative’s largest public endeavour to date. The project places newly created augmented reality (AR) monuments by four New York artists—Pamela Council, Derrick Adams, Tourmaline and Hank Willis Thomas—into designated public spaces across the city.
Introduction: The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia
The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia is a tiny, Matriarchal, Micro-nation located at the confluence of feminism and geography.
Grand Marshal Yagjian's Great Vision for The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia came in 2015 when its land claim was 'liberated' from a former lover’s house for a greater purpose.
In 2016 an eye-catching sparrow was spotted in Scotland. The bird had ingested feed pellets from a nearby salmon farm, turning its feathers pink. Cramped in underwater feedlots, farmed salmon have no access to the prey that colour their flesh in the wild. Instead, they are fed artificial colourants mixed with supplements, drugs, and hormones, causing them to relentlessly produce the additive-filled flesh that fills supermarket shelves.
The Wuming Painting Collective, formed in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), was a clandestine group of artists who defied the authoritarian control over art and expression. In a time when all art was harnessed as propaganda to glorify the state and Chairman Mao, Wuming artists turned their gaze toward everyday life, painting still lifes, street scenes, human figures, and most iconically, serene landscapes.
Walking the rows of shoes—favorite slippers, old Army boots, gold stilettos—it’s the baby shoes that stop you cold. Shoes began to fill a plaza opposite Puerto Rico’s Capitol building, and by Sunday morning, there were more than 3,000 pairs, a growing memorial to the roughly 4,645 people estimated to have died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
When And Where Will #TeamTrees Plant 21.5 Million Crowdfunded Trees?
Two months after reaching one of the most ambitious crowdfunding goals in YouTube history, #TeamTrees is getting closer to delivering on behalf of its 800,000+ unique donors.
Young women in South Korea are fighting for a new future. The #MeToo movement which has highlighted sexual harassment and abuse around the world has taken a surprising hold in this socially conservative country.
Artists4Ceasefire is a collective of actors, filmmakers, and other artists calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire during the Gaza war in Gaza, the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians, and the release of all hostages.The collective was started on October 20, 2023, two weeks after the October 7 attacks.
"An atmosphere of fear and anger spread across Myanmar this week as millions of people awoke to find out the military had taken control, ousting the elected government.
But how do you fight back in a country where protests have been violently suppressed before?
For some, it has meant putting pen to paper and taking the battle online.
Almost all of Rivera's art told a story, many of which depicted Mexican society, the Mexican Revolution, or reflected his own personal social and political beliefs, and In the Arsenal is no different. The woman on the right side of this painting in Tina Modotti, an Italian photographer and revolutionary political activist, who is holding ammunition for Julio Antonio Mella, a founder of the internationalized Cuban communist party.
The graffiti made up of 24 stenciled Chinese characters sprayed in red paint against a white backdrop across walls appeared in East London’s street art haven Brick Lane on August 5, 2023. It was created a group of young people from mainland China, including several art students at London’s Royal College of Art.
Faith Ringgold is a successful painter, sculptor, mixed-media artist, author, feminist, and political activist. She is particularly known for her narrative quilts, as she explores identity, race, family ties, as well as cultural and political topics through her many different forms of storytelling.
“I have always wanted to tell my story or, more to the point, my side of the story” - Faith Ringgold
Cheril Linett is a female artist from Chile, with a background in performance art and stage performance, who primarily focuses her artwork on feminist issues in Chile, especially ones involving violence, murder, hate crime and different kinds of oppression and assault, but also creates artwork reflecting issues in other parts of Latin America.
Gregg Segal -- a California-based artist who is known for using the medium of photography to explore culture with the "sensibility of a sociologist" -- asked family, friends, neighbors and other acquaintances to save their trash and recyclables for a week and then lie down and be photographed in it:
A new exhibition titled “Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures” will debut at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to examine Afrofuturist expression and culture as it relates to music, activism, art, and more.
From this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27632527
A campaign by one of Brazil's biggest football clubs to encourage fans to become organ donors has led to a massive rise in the number of life-changing transplants and reduced waiting lists for organs in the area almost to zero.
Add Colour (Refugee Boat) begins as an all-white boat in an all-white room. Ono’s instruction for this collective, participatory work reads: ‘Just blue like the ocean.’ You are invited to contribute your hopes and beliefs in blue and white.
After winning the TED Prize on March 2, 2011, the French-artist JR launched the Inside Out Project, in his first TED Talk. Using his own artistic practice as inspiration, this participatory platform helps individuals and communities to make a statement by displaying large-scale black and white portraits in public spaces. Through their “Actions,” communities around the world have sparked collaborations and conversations.
The work of a radical theater and puppetry collective, known as Papel Machete, produces and performs throughout Puerto Rico and the United States. Papel Machete was established on May 1, 2006 during protests responding to the government shutdown and political and economic crisis prompted by Puerto Rico’s status as a United States colony.
Faced with a lack of prosecution of those accused of crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s military dictatorship, family members and descendants of the country’s estimated 30,000 disappeared took action.
Established in 2015 in the Tennōzu neighborhood of Tokyo, and attracting industry professionals and art enthusiasts from both Japan and abroad, PIGMENT TOKYO has emerged as an art supply store specializing in the materials and tools used in traditional Japanese painting, such as mineral pigments, washi paper, and brushes. However, it’s more than just a store.
Through her work, South African art activist Athenkosi Kwinana aspires to deepen the understanding of Albinism in her native country, where she has faced discrimination in most aspects of her life from childhood days on. Working with both drawing and printmaking, Kwinana creates large self-portraits that aim to constructively reimagine the representation of Albinism in the country’s black communities and African contemporary art as whole.