From Jezebel:
Marley Dias is an 11-year-old New Jersey resident who’s rounding up children’s books that feature black female leads so that she and her peers have more fictional characters to look up to.
The project, titled #1000BlackGirlBooks, started when Marley complained to her mother about reading too many books about white male protagonists in school.
The story of an artist. Laolu Senbanjo grew up surrounded by the culture and mythology of the Yoruba, an ethnic group from the southwest of Nigeria, but he never imagined how it would influence the artist he is today. After a career as a human rights attorney, Senbanjo moved to New York City to pursue art full time. “With my art, I like to tell stories, I like to start a conversation,” says Senbanjo, but life as an artist in New York was tough.
The signature angst of our time was profoundly expressed in the poems submitted for WOMAWORDS Literary Press June 2020 edition, Imaging Life After COVID-19, offering women poets an opportunity to write about their experience of the pandemic and their vision of or for the future. The universal trauma wrought by this virus, invisible and silent and pouncing with madness and mendacity, brings us to a place we’d like to forget but never will.
Museums and art galleries are not usually the sites of feminist political protest. Yet over the past couple of years, before the lockdown, gallery visitors all over the UK had noticed a small, determined activist whose modus operandi is “Small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe”.
On 6 January 2012, Metrópolis (TVE 2) broadcast "Activismo y Ficción", a report directed by Enmedio members Leónidas Martín and Núria Campabadal. It looks at a series of creative projects that lie somewhere between fiction and social activism.
Born in China in 1941, artist Lily Yeh experienced first-hand the ravages of that country’s civil war when her family became refugees, fleeing to Taiwan as the communists took over. That personal story and the story of Yeh’s global art activism with communities from North Philadelphia to Rwanda and China is the subject of a new documentary film, The Barefoot Artist, now in post-production and ready for viewing later this year.
The play celebrates the life and legacy of the Mexican-American labor activist César Chávez. His early life as well as his partnership with Dolores Huerta, activism with the National Farm Workers Association, the 1968 grape boycott, and his ongoing commitment to nonviolent civil rights work.
Most cheLA activities are organized around a series of workshops, which may act in combination, are designed as areas of aesthetic, technological and theoretical concentration, and structured to promote their development. Its core activities are research and experimentation residences. As participants in the Parque Patricios neighborhood life, within the Federal Capital, are evident human needs.
In “Speech/Acts,” a group exhibition organized by Meg Onli at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Tiona Nekkia McClodden stood out as artists who take up voices, histories, and experiences that can help audiences move forward and endure in the future.
In 2013, Shell sent out press releases about their upcoming event, the Science Slam, which would aim to “celebrate the company’s responsible oil production” and “showcase ideas for renewable energy by scientists and students.” Essentially, Shell organized this event in the hopes that it would allow the multinational oil company to appear as if it is actually concerned about the environment and finding alternatives to oil.
Note before the post: This article is great in highlighting a specific case of creative activism in the streets of New York City, but also gives some contextual background to how this project manifested.
On a sidewalk in the Village in downtown Manhattan, an African-American woman leans on her elbows and knees, wearing only black underpants. Scrawled in black marker all over her body are the words "Ain't I a Woman?"
MOTHER EARTH is broken from incessant decadent wars carelessly perpetuated by mindless ,vicious political imbeciles. Our natural wealth plundered by greedy ,gluttonous economic dare-devils, imbibing crude oil and fresh blood . Warlord-ism set the suns of our freedom, our earth is torn naked . War is ravaging the beauty of African diamond fields ,We are now Wretched Vagabonds . Warlords are frying peace in oil springs of the Gulf.
Topless queer men light spliffs on the beach. A trans man injects testosterone on the toilet. Drag queens nonchalantly scroll through their phones and smoke. These are just some of the images that make up the new book from Leo Adef. Titled WARP, it’s comprised of photographs captured across four years spent in Barcelona's queer underworld
"A Night of Philosophy and Ideas is a thinker’s lollapalooza. The free, 12-hour weekend lyceum at the Brooklyn Public Library includes spirited debate, live music, theater, performance art pieces, and film screenings. At any given hour, five or six different events will be taking place simultaneously. Visitors are encouraged to come and go as the spirit moves them.
The video for “Borders,” a song off MIA's album Matahdatah, features images recalling all sorts of migrations from the developing world—there are people crossing deserts, fences, and bodies of water. Though much of M.I.A.’s work has been about women and children, this video is filled with brown men: the ultimate bogeyman for many in the West, stereotyped as terrorists, criminals, and job-takers.
O artista norte-americano Shepard Fairey inaugura esta sexta-feira, em Lisboa, “Printed Matters”, exposição que mostra sobretudo peças impressas, técnica que crê “não ter os dias contados”, e cujo conteúdo activista gostava de ver mais vezes nas Artes Visuais.
El Rey de la Ruina, aka The King of Ruin, is a local artist based in Madrid, Spain, who creates artistic activist pieces that range from the impact Covid-19 had on the social life of people in Spain, to the impact gentrification has taken on various groups of people. He tends to utilize (at least in his more recent pieces) bright colors and fun, geometric shapes in his art.
Shea Glover, age 18, began a senior project that became an activist/social campaign. Shea approached people throughout her high school and asked them if they would pose for her senior project. To each person she would say, I'm taking pictures of things I find beautiful". Recording the entire encounter revealed the diverse reactions of each student and teacher. Some erupted with laughter, others a huge grin, while some embarrassment.
We all learn art in school. Every kid loves to draw at some point. People get fascinated with the details of their new camera, or spend free time writing poems. But eventually, there’s a not a teacher telling you how great your are, or the camera gets put away, or you just plain get busy and stop. Years could go by before you start again, if you ever do at all.
“A Foreigner Makes Beijing’s Smog into Rings” has become a tittle used by a multitude of popular public accounts on Wechat, the most commonly used chatting app in China, which makes more and more Chinese netizens know the story of Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and “social designer”, who has been making effort to combine the energy saving technology with visually enjoyable art.
Prague's Lennon Wall is a tourist attraction to some, and a participatory street art haven for others. Directly opposite of the French embassy, the wall has been filled with evolving art and graffiti since the 80s. The wall received its first public inscription, a tribute to John Lennon, following Lennon's assassination in September 1980.
The Harlem Festival of Culture not only pays homage to the past but also envisions a brighter future. It serves as a platform to showcase the rich diversity and dynamism of Harlem's artistic community, while also acting as a catalyst for social change and community empowerment. The festival boasts a lineup of artists from various genres and backgrounds, including jazz, soul, hip-hop, gospel, blues, rock, Latin, and Afrobeat.
You get a flat tire. You fail a test. You lose a job. You lose a relationship. It’s so easy to let the struggles of life consume and affect the way we think and react. Broadly, negativity is something that everyone is faced with on a day to day basis. It comes in many forms, and everyone deals with it differently. It seems as though negativity can make it difficult to acknowledge any positive aspect of any situation.