A new exhibition at The Shed in New York is a colour-soaked, eye-opening look into Yanomami life – an Indigenous culture in the heart of the Amazon rainforest
FEBRUARY 13, 2023
TEXT: Violet Conroy
FEMEN is an organization that is revolutionizing the feminist movement. Founded in Ukraine in 2008 and adopted in Spain in 2013, FEMEN protests gender-based issues such as inequalities, violence, patriarchy, etc. Since its creation, it has spread to several other countries, and there have been hundreds of organized protests.
Musicals for Change is a project aimed at educating elementary children to be active participants in the world through theater. Written by Diane Beckstead, these musicals promote uplifting messages about the importance of community, the arts, and helping each other, while raising support for worthy causes.
The Strangers Project is a celebration of the stories we’re surrounded with every day—both from the strangers we share our space with every day, and our own stories we carry. It’s about a connection with ourselves, with people around us, and with something greater than ourselves.
Dismaland was an experimental and interactive art installation that mimicked and mocked similar attractions and characters of the Disney franchise. He later referred to it as a ‘bemusement park.’ Although the bemusement park seemed to disappear as suddenly as it arrived, the exhibition lives on in the collective memory of the British public.
Design4Peace is a collection of political posters created by Leslie Dwyer. Images speak to issues of war and peace, prisons, solidarity and movement, immigration, economy and class, violence against women, ecology, agriculture, racism, and gender. Leslie works with movement and educational organizations, such as Veterans for Peace and Teaching for Change to support their work visually.
From March 14, 2010 to May 31, 2010, in the Museum of Modern Art, Marina Abramović held an activist art called The Artist Is Present. In the exhibition, there were simply a pair of chairs and a desk. Abramović sat on one chair, and the participators could sit on another chair voluntarily. Without a word, Abramović and the participators just looked at each other’s eyes.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is home to the Oglala Lakota, designated as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. This land and its people have endured many tragedies at the hands of the United States government. Over 500 treaties negotiated in good faith with the U.S. government have been broken, changed or nullified to suit expansionist interests. Despite centuries of oppression, the Lakota people remain resilient, faithful, and strong.
Students at the NYC iSchool, a high school in Manhattan, worked for 9 weeks to create works of activist art with art teacher Gretel Smith. We were lucky enough to have Stephen Duncomb and Steve Lambert from the Center for Artistic Activism come to our class to teach a lesson inspiring students to think like activists; they came back later to critique students’ works-in-progress.
A new series of video commentaries with Davey Drumpf, The Donald's long-lost third cousin, twice removed. His views are several degrees to the Left of the Don's. First installment: Co-housing vs. Weaponized Xenophobia.
Chanel Miller is a Palo Alto–born artist and writer. She first came into the public eye as “Emily Doe,” the victim of a 2015 Stanford University sexual assault whose impact statement presented in court went viral. Miller relinquished her anonymity in 2019, when she published the acclaimed memoir, “Know My Name.” "I was, I am, I will be" is Miller’s first commissioned artwork for a museum and is on view through February 2022.
In Tunisia, a country gripped by economic uncertainty and still in the midst of rebuilding its identity after the Arab Spring, hip-hop culture is viewed as part of an ongoing dissident movement. Just a few events, such as the recent Mafia Wallitili Festival in the heart of downtown Tunis, offer the local hip-hop community an opportunity to share their values with the broader population.
The questions that London-based collective One Of My Kind (aka OOMK) explore are those of identity and belonging—issues that are experienced by everyone regardless of whether they grew up defining themselves based on the music they listen to, the hobbies they enjoy, or the religion they practice.
Beautiful Trouble is a book, web toolbox and international network of artist-activist trainers whose mission is to make grassroots movements more creative and more effective.
Students at art colleges across China are taking a strong stance in the midst of the largest wave of protests to have gripped the country since 1989. As demonstrations against the government’s strict Covid-19 policies erupted across the country over the weekend, students rallied on campuses to create protest art and graffiti.
The "Democracy Wall" in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, New York was established in 2009. This wall is a long-term, community art activist project that is part wall mural, part past information archive.
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.).
Per os is a research-based art project about the pharmaceutical companies' role in our society, psychiatry and healthcare. Using surveys I have conducted over the past three years and a large amount of anger at how wrong and corrupt the system is, I would like to interpret this research artistically in order to develop material for an exhibition and interventions.
Haiti is a conservative society where Roman Catholicism shapes many of its social norms. Patriarchal norms, says Haitian feminist Pascale Solages, co-founder and general coordinator of feminist organization Nègès Mawon, have informed its strict views on abortion. In Haiti, women can’t legally access voluntary abortions. Doctors can’t perform them unless the woman’s life is in danger.
With delicate composition, striking details and strong emotion, five editorial posters drawn by Wuheqilin have attracted some half million followers to his account on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform. His political views expressed in his art have led to some netizens dubbing him the "Wolf Worrier artist."
Hundreds of people led by Indigenous land defenders and a coalition of environmental groups worked to shut down a large mining industry convention in downtown Toronto on Sunday, blockading the entrances to the building where the meeting was taking place as they protested against "the extractive industry's violence, ongoing colonization, and complete disregard for the future of life on this planet."
In August 2015, Weston-Super-Mare - a sleepy seaside town in Somerset, England - suddenly became the top destination for the metropolitan elite, welcoming celebrity guests like Brad Pitt, Jack Black and Mark Ronson. Overnight this quaint town, just 18 miles from Bristol, was transformed by anonymous street artist Banksy when he opened his very own dystopian Disneyland style theme park called ‘Dismaland’.
The streets of Santiago are once again alive with the spirit of revolution. For weeks now, working-class Chileans have occupied national monuments and blocked major intersections in protest of widespread inequality. They desire full reform — a request so long in the making that it is practically tradition. The country’s floundering political elite offer half measures while dispatching riot police and the military.
In 1932, Bennett Cerf, cofounder of Random House Publishing, acquired the rights to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in the United States, believing that the book would be as successful as it had been throughout Europe. But Cerf had a problem. The book was banned in the United States and would be seized as soon as it came off the printing press, which would lose Cerf millions of dollars.