Meet To Sleep, a campaign started by Blank Noise, asks citizens from all across India to come to different public spaces like parks, and sleep there in order to take back free spaces without being afraid for their safety. The first meet was organised in November, 2014, in Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park. And since then there have been eleven meets across various cities including Jaipur, Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.
For third world artists who are forced into exile, the creativity process could be greatly challenged due to displacement in language, community and history. Many filmmakers in exile tend to look at their connection to the homeland in strictly political terms, or give up making films overall.
Women in China are covertly resisting government crackdowns on discussions over their Me Too movement with a clever workaround.
The phrase “rice bunny” (米兔), pronounced as “mi tu,” has popped up on social media networks after censors removed posts that mentioned sexual harassment or the hashtag #MeToo. While those phrases are heavily monitored, Rice Bunny isn’t.
Female Frequency is a collective dedicated to empowering women & girls through the creation of music that is entirely female generated. "We are making an album created entirely by females, start to finish --
this means that all writing, instrumentation, arrangement, performance, production, engineering, mixing, mastering, marketing and visual media will be carried out by females."
As massacres, civil wars, and violence permeated communities, people have searched for asylum in other countries. Due to its location and relative safety, Spain has become a common destination for immigrants seeking a better life. Female immigrants in particular tend to experience much more arduous journeys in that they frequently are subjugated to sexual abuse.
Growing up in extreme poverty under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Mam was sold into sexual slavery when she was 12, eventually ending up in a Phnom Penh brothel where she endured unimaginable daily torture and rape. After being made to watch as another girl, her best friend, was murdered, Mam escaped and was helped out of Cambodia by a French aid worker.
Marisela Escobedo was 52 when she was shot dead on a sidewalk outside of the Government Palace of Chihuahua City, northern Mexico. She had set up camp in one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities – a place where people won’t leave their homes at night to protest day and night against corruption and impunity in her daughter’s murder case.
When Agnes Gund, the 77-year-old philanthropist and president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, got the call, she thought: “That’s odd. What’s that got to do with someone like me?”
When Fran Lebowitz, the 65-year-old author, got the call, she said, “I thought it was a joke.”
I get catcalled on the street by a construction worker. He says that he can see I’m smart because I have enormous books. He tells me he’s reading the latest Zadie Smith novel. I invite him to join my book club, and spend all night fantasizing about his insightful commentary around non-linear plot structure.
In 1998 Portuguese born artist Paula Rego created a series of work entitled Untitled. The Abortion Pastels. Rego created her work in response to a referendum to legalise abortion in Portugal, which was very narrowly defeated. Each canvas depicted the image of a woman undergoing an unsafe abortion. When the series was exhibited in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Rego recalled the whispered secrets of women in the gallery while looking at her artworks.
The latest in street art activism is confronting sexism in an unconventional, but wonderful, way.
Street artist, Elonë, from Karlsruhe, Germany, is paving her city with messages against sexism, street harassment and sexual abuse — all printed on menstrual pads.
Inspired by the ecological disaster unfolding across the planet and driven by empowering underrepresented people, Moule, a painter, illustrator, and graphic designer, creates art that makes a statement.
Dressed in a magenta blazer and wearing bright pink lipstick, she is as colourful and spirited as one of her illustrations.
Born as a side project Las hijas de Violencia approaches the subject of street harassment and gender based violence through performance art, punk and video that is addressing socially legitimized male violence. "As actresses and as women we feel directly affected and consider it urgent to address the real cause of the problem: its ideological nature.
A hundred days. That’s how long it took Xiao Meili to walk from Beijing, in the arid north, to the humid, central city of Changsha. Since September, the 24-year-old has been trekking south and west across the Chinese heartland, along rumbling highways, around construction sites, down dusty streets. She stops along the way to send letters to local officials. Her plea: China must change the way it handles sex abuse.
When Behnaz Babazadeh was young, her family moved from Afghanistan to the US. She loved almost everything about her new home — especially America’s amazing selection of candy — but she also loved wearing her familiar pink-flowered headscarf, which she’d grown used to wearing as part of her school uniform in her old home.
For artists exploring themes of violence towards humans and animals, there is a fine line between thoughtfully engaging and needlessly shocking the viewer; being sensationally explicit can turn people away while being tacit or innocuous may fail to make an impact.
John Shore and his wife Catherine had been attending the First Presbyterian Church of San Diego for six years when they were nominated to serve as deacons. But before they could be ordained, they were asked to sign a document agreeing that no person in a same-sex relationship should hold any position of authority within the church, which is one of the city’s oldest. It was 1990.
A photography project on China's marriage market has recently reignited the debate about marriage in China, and the phenomenon of women deemed too old to marry, or "leftover women" in the country.
As she puts the finishing touches to her habit, Sister Clarita, a Mexican immigrant living in Los Angeles, tells me that there are more than 3,000 LGBT+ nuns around the world. They’re part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an international network of activists who identify as secular nuns.
In 2012, Sandra Fluke stood up in front of Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to advocate for the mandatory inclusion of birth control coverage in health insurance. Republicans on the committee refused to allow her to speak.
In the past, prostitution was intrinsically tied to religion ritual and public policy, and it wasn't considered a taboo. Taking up from the idea of ancient sandals worn by prostitutes, the artist has created platform shoes that specifically focused on their protection and safety nowadays, with a GPS tracker that can send emergency signals to 911 or a sex workers' rights group.
"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.
This work addresses inequalities and disparities experienced specifically by LGTBIQ peoples in Spain. In the heart of this picture are six individuals dressed in queer fashion walking and linking arms. This is a powerful depiction. Usually, especially in a global context, it is unsafe for queer people to brave the streets alone. Here in Pozo’s work this represents pride without fear.