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.
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.
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.
A thirty-nine-foot banner was unfurled in the rotunda of a sparsely-attended Guggenheim Museum this evening, the latest action carried out by the Gulf Ultra Luxury Front (G.U.L.F.) activist group. Decrying labor abuse at the museum’s planned Abu Dhabi outpost, the banner announced the forthcoming “Countdown” campaign by Gulf Labor, the larger collective of artists and activists of which G.U.L.F. is an offshoot.
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.
In state capitals and street protests, women’s rights activists have been wearing red robes and white bonnets based on “The Handmaid's Tale,” the 1985 novel that is now a series on Hulu.
Silent, heads bowed, the activists in crimson robes and white bonnets have been appearing at demonstrations against gender discrimination and the infringement of reproductive and civil rights.
Sitting at a folding table in the basement of Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Columbus, Monica Jacobo used a felt tip marker to write the words “No means no!” on a white bandana.
NEW YORK, Ny., Nov 19, 2018 - Two artists, Actress/Creator/Native New Yorker Maia Lorian and collaborator veteran NYC Street Artist Abe Lincoln Jr. bring to you “A Presidential Parody.” In a nation that seems to place higher value on the American dollar over the American life, the artists felt it was time to release an ad campaign that reflects Trump’s “all American” values.
Pneumoconiosis has become the most serious occupational disease in China, and the vast majority of sufferers, nearly 6 million, are migrant workers. Because of the long-term inhalation of dust caused by pulmonary fibrosis, they usually breathing if not oxygen machine help, easy to suffocate.
The True Cost is a 2015 documentary film directed by Andrew Morgan that focuses on fast fashion. It discusses several aspects of the garment industry from production—mainly exploring the life of low-wage workers in developing countries—to its after-effects such as river and soil pollution, pesticide contamination, disease and death.
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.
Ai Weiwei's installation Sunflower Seeds is a profound commentary on both historical and contemporary issues through the medium of art. First exhibited at Tate Modern in London from October 12, 2010, to May 2, 2011, the work features an astonishing one hundred million handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds, spread across the gallery's 1,000 square meter Turbine Hall to a depth of ten centimeters.
Luke Ching Chin Wai is a conceptual artist and labour-artivist in Hong Kong. Since 2013, he has worked undercover in different low-paid jobs in the city, including as a security guard, supermarket cashier worker, and metro cleaner to learn about poor people's working conditions. He then uses these experiences to create art and push for improved labour rights.
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"
"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.
"May you live in interesting times" is the familiar Chinese saying, usually spat out as a curse. You can see why in "A Touch of Sin," a film by renowned director Jia Zhang-ke. That kind of time is now, in the history of his country. With four vignettes inspired by real-life "ripped from the headline" events, he shows what the great economic expansion of China is doing to the majority of its people.
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.).
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.
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.
Just over a decade ago on May 15, 2011, a wave of social outrage began as the Spanish people collectively decided that they had had enough of the corruption, cuts, and inequalities affecting their country.
ACE Bank was a hoax bank developed as part of a bigger campaign by Netwerk Vlaanderen, a Belgian organization concerned with banks’ responsibilities for what they invest in. ACE bank was an elaborate deception, with a headquarters in central Brussels, parodying other banks. It claimed to be investigating whether there was a market for its special way of doing business.
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.
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.
In May 2020, a team of artists, activists, folklorists, and people who lost loved ones to Covid-19 came together to make monthly memorial sites in New York City to remember victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. They continued installing memorials around New York City every month during the summer of 2020.