Located off the west coast of Scotland are the Outer Hebrides, an island chain where Finnish artists Pekka Niittyvirta and Timo Aho decided to install their piece, Lines. The installation is composed of lines of light wrapped around buildings or hovering on a grass field. At high tide, the lights turn on, illuminating the serene landscape, and marking the height of future sea-level rise on the low-lying archipelago.
“Works in Progress” highlights artists across a range of disciplines whose work deals with ecological themes. Considering the particular role that artists play in the climate movement, this column shares their voices and provides a glimpse behind the curtain into their creative processes and experiences.
Northeast Minneapolis is going to have the first full-fledged water bar of its kind, an establishment where you can sit and drink a variety of local tap waters to your heart’s content. Their delightful motto: “Water is all we have.”
Renowned French artist JR and Oscar-nominated American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky have collaborated on The Standing March, a major public artwork exhibited in Paris during the UN’s COP21 climate conference. The video projection will remind leaders that the world is watching as they gather to negotiate a deal aimed at keeping global warming below 2°C.
PARIS — At the end of the Dior fashion shown in Paris last September, a woman got up from the audience and walked down the runway carrying a yellow banner painted with the words “We Are All Fashion Victims.”
Bus Regulation: The Musical (2019 – 2023) is a Trilogy of roller-skating Musicals inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ performed in three of the UK’s biggest post-industrial city-regions – Greater Manchester, Strathclyde and Merseyside – in collaboration wi
As part of the commemoration of this year’s World Art Day (April 15), Ghanaian-based Tapioca Foundation and Imposters Art Collective have embarked on a campaign to educate the public about environmental sustainability.
The project, which was launched in Ada in the Greater Accra Region, is intended to use art pieces to highlight issues relating to environmental protection and climate action to boost awareness in local communities.
MOSCOW (AP) — Put your paws in the air.
Moscow police have arrested 10 environmental activists, including four dressed in polar bear costumes, who were protesting outside the main office of Gazprom, the Russian oil and natural gas giant.
"Operation Paydirt is a multidisciplinary, artist-driven project advancing a solution to the devastating problem of lead (Pb) contaminated soil that puts thousands of children at risk for severe learning disabilities and behavioral problems. The goals of the project are to raise awareness of the issues of lead and to create a model for making cities lead-safe across the United States.
During this time rent prices in the Lower East Side/ East Village were rising due to the presence of many community gardens. In response to this, then Mayor Giuliani decided to sell the 198 gardens in question. Streets into Gardens was an effective project that engaged the neighborhood into a collective of change.
The Breath of China is a thematic photo exhibition of thousands of air-quality images taken by 44 photographers in 34 Chinese capital cities. The exhibition was displayed on the 14th Pingyao International Photography Festival (PIPF) in Shanxi Province, from September 19th to 27th, 2014.
An early representation of Nara’s strong stance against nuclear weapons, No Nukes is now synonymous with the antinuclear protest movement. The work is painted over a promotional poster for bossa nova musician Vinicius Cantuária’s Amor Brasileiro (1998) among other printed ephemera.
"Energy costs surged with the Feb. 2022 launch by Russia of full-scale war in Ukraine and hit hard for farmers reliant on tractors, harvesters and other fuel-guzzling equipment. Prices also soared for other inputs that underpin intensive farming, notably fertilizers. French farmers were already struggling to compete in the increasingly globalized economy.
Visual artist Alexandre Orion removes soot in an artful manner to produce skulls in the tunnels of the polluted city of Sao Paulo. Orion does so in an attempt to create intervention, raise awarenes, and decrease pollution. "From the ocular cavities of so many dead, his work looks out on the living and interrogates people passing by; it quietly criticizes our omission, our comfortable acceptance of pollution." ( Jose De Souza Martins)
The Convergence graphic novel series is a science fiction dystopia. It tells the story of a dying earth and the dark covenant that the last civilization acceded to for survival. The social contract is disrupted when a prophecy is triggered which can heal the dying earth. Book 1 was released this past June with 7 more episodic books coming monthly in 2016.
The Gola Rainforest, straddling Sierra Leone and Liberia is a lush, green haven. Spanning about 700 square kilometers and stretches across both countries, the rainforest is home to diverse and globally threatened wildlife, including over 300 bird species and endangered species such as pygmy hippos, chimpanzees, and forest elephants.
Flushing Creek is so hidden by industrial sites and highways, it’s almost invisible to those passing through the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. “I lived in Flushing my whole life and didn’t know that I lived near waterways until I was 20 years old,” Cody Ann Herrmann told Hyperallergic.
Many artists are inspired to bring climate change into their work after a direct experience with it. Catherine Sarah Young hopes her work helps people understand and talk about their experiences with climate change.
Thousands of Indigenous activists and environmentalists have converged in one of the Amazon’s biggest cities to voice their hopes and fears about the future of the world’s biggest rainforest.
The Brazilian city of Belém will this week host a two-day conclave bringing together the presidents of eight Amazon nations including Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.
In the 1970s, Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, transformed six blocks of the main downtown shopping street into a pedestrian zone in 1972, despite fierce objections from the merchants. He quickly accomplished this change in just three days by installing paving, lighting, planters, and furniture. The once-resistant merchants were impressed by the increase in their business and soon demanded an expansion of the traffic-free district.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — In director Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” a 2021 satire about two scientists who try in vain to warn the world about a planet-destroying comet, the scientists’ desperate plea for action ultimately doesn’t work.
But don’t take that as McKay’s view on the power of activism to change the course of the climate crisis, the existential threat his movie was really about.
A dilapidated wooden fishing boat laden down with animals who are just skin and bone, a sort of dystopian Noah’s ark trying to escape the end of the earth and an empty city devoid of human life that has been overtaken by nature.
Chim↑Pom, a Tokyo-based art collective, garnered significant attention with their provocative project "Super Rat," which debuted in 2011. This work involved capturing urban rats from Tokyo's bustling Shibuya district, taxidermying them, and transforming them into real-life representations of Pikachu, the iconic character from the Pokémon franchise.
Once a year people all over the Earth go to places that they love and where they live that have been damaged, and they bring attention, curiosity, a sense of adventure, and beauty there.
In the process we give back to the places that have given so much to us.
Benjamin Von Wong’s latest art-as-activism installation looks like something Photoshopped onto reality. A large brass-looking faucet, suspended in the air, pours a river of plastic out of its spout.