Born on June 30, 1902, in Mexico City, Leopoldo Méndez would become one of Mexico’s most significant and beloved graphic artists of the twentieth century. Méndez was one of eight children in a poor household. At a young age, Méndez used art as a means to bring joy to the Mexican community and attended the Academy of San Carlos located in Mexico City.
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.
On a recent eight-hour shift at a McDonald’s in Hong Kong, Luke Ching, 52, wiped tables, cleared trays of half-eaten fries, emptied cups of soda and milk tea and lugged bulging trash bags to the dumpster.
For him, the main goal of the part-time work was not making ends meet. It was research for his main pursuit: using art to advocate for better treatment of people in menial jobs in a city with one of the widest income gaps in the world.
In 2016, the Guggenheim Museum commissioned its very first robotic artwork called Can’t Help Myself (Wannmann, 2016). The artwork is created by two of China’s most controversial artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu and can be described as a robotic arm that has one specific, life-long duty: to prevent the deep-red, bloodlike liquid, which constantly oozes outwards, from straying too far (Weng, n.d.).
On a warm summer afternoon in the Italian city of Bologna, a group of around 15 young people march through the crowded city centre to a high-end pastry shop in Strada Maggiore.
El Sistema, also known as The National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestra and Choir, was established in Venezuela in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan educator, musician and activist. The music education program operates within the voluntary sector and is funded publicly.
National Public Radio (NPR):
There's no historical marker outside Jacob Lawrence's childhood home in New York City's Harlem neighborhood.
But Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has an idea of what it might say: "Here lived one of the 20th century's most influential visual artists, a man named Jacob Lawrence, who was a child of southern migrants."
LEGOVC is a fictional, made up, 100% fake, plastic, 'pantomime villain' Vice Chancellor of a fake British University struggling as his utter managerial brilliance crumbles in the face of sustained strike action by his staff after their pension scheme is slashed.
Shackles. Cotton. The Big House.
Americans tend to think of slavery in terms of chattel slavery. Plantation Slavery. Slavery where human beings are bought, sold, and owned. The kind outlawed in the United States by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Slavery as a relic of the 19th Century.
“Six of us lived, worked, slept in a 10-by-10 (foot) room without a bed, bathroom, or clean water,” Nasreen Sheikh remembers.
Sewing and textiles have always been a part of the artist Aram Han Sifuentes’ life. Her South Korean immigrant parents operated a dry cleaning business, and she mended her own clothing from a young age.
In an endeavor to raise awareness at the local and international level, Razia organized the Mifohaza Masoala (Wake Up Masoala) music and environmental festival, which took place at the edge of the Masoala Rainforest in October 2011. The concert featured some of Madagascar’s most thrilling performers, and the festival was a tremendous success, with over 10,000 people in attendance.
At noon today, a group of artists and activists including members of the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (known as G.U.L.F.) unfurled a large parachute in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, demanding to meet with a member of the institution’s board of trustees to discuss the labor conditions at its Abu Dhabi site.
On April 24, 2013, more than 1,000 lives were taken in the Rana Plaza Collapse. While history remembers this tragic event as the deadliest garment factory accident, activist and photographer Taslima Akhter reveals a story of dreams crushed by structural murder. Dedicating her career to the lives and struggles of garment workers in Bangladesh, she has continued to foster a community rallying together for safer working conditions.
Conquest is a compelling new collective performance conceived by acclaimed artist Pope.L (b. Newark, 1955). It is inspired by his iconic solo crawls, where the artist dragged himself across a number of different urban landscapes. Navigating the streets and parks of Downtown Manhattan, Conquest extends this irreverent and provocative forty-year tradition of public performance with an ambitious group crawl involving over 140 volunteers.
From Public Delivery:
"The art piece, which was showcased at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington D.C. from February 1 to 17, 2019, allowed visitors to interact with it. The audience had a pile of crumbs placed right in front of the three-walled setup, which they would through and watch as ‘Ivanka’ vacuumed them all up.
Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) was registered in 2009 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a non-profit international membership organization with representative offices in China, India, Pakistan, and London. It has more than 400 member organizations around the world, mainly including cotton growers, cotton textile enterprises, and retail brands. The group aims to promote what it calls "Better Cotton" around the world.
A fat cat, a pig wearing a top hat and five rats. All seven inflatables faced the 34th Street entrance of the Empire State Building last Thursday, two weeks into a protest by members of Laborers Local 79 who rallied, hundreds strong, in the afternoon shadow of the props.
Working in a grocery store has earned me and my co-workers a temporary status. After years of being overlooked, we suddenly feel a sense of responsibility, solidarity, and pride. On a private Facebook group page for my company, Trader Joe’s, one employee from Washington State posted a picture of a company-issued work shirt hanging from the ceiling of the store. A sign attached to the shirt read not all heroes wear scrubs.
Khalil Bandib is a Berkeley-based, award-winning editorial cartoonist with a unique perspective. He critiques a myriad of topics, from racism and homophobia to foreign policy and the Patriot Act. Bandib was born in North Africa under a French colonist regime; he brings a non-Eurocentric perspective not typically visible in large corporate media.
Singaporean artist Lee Wen’s series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992–2012), one of his most famous and long-standing performances, was not simply a personal affront, it was a political affront. At the intersection of Asian art history, critical race theory, and migration and diasporic studies, one is never far (enough away) from the chromatic framing of race and ethnicity: yellow race, yellow peril, yellow face, the forever foreigner.
Mayday is a neighborhood resource and a citywide destination for engaging programming, a home for radical thought and debate, and a welcoming gathering place for people to work, learn, drink, dance and build together.
Whose Utopia? is a color film which is 19 minutes 58 seconds long. It was originally commissioned by the Siemens Arts Program back in 2005. The projector-style video is based on the work and social lives of assembly line workers at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in the Pearl River Delta in China. This area has received huge numbers of immigrants from inland provinces seeking work and better lives in the wake of Beijing’s booming economy.
With the intention of recognizing the work of the Latin American carreteros (garbage pickers) that collect recyclable materials in wheel carts, and increase environmental consciousness, artist Mundano created “Pimp My Carroça"
Omelia Contadina was born out of the concern of JR and director Alice Rohrwacher for the difficulties encountered by many small farmers and inhabitants of the Alfina plateau, in Italy.
Malteros are the porters who transport luggage and goods between the border of the US and Mexico. Working with a group of maleteros in 2005, artist Mark Bradford collaborated on a system of maps and signs that placed the marginalized work of the unofficial maleteros alongside that of the sanctioned labor of policemen and taxi drivers.