For over 60 years, Colombia has been facing war between guerrilla groups, the State, paramilitary groups and drug dealers. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, raped, displaced and threaten by this armed conflict. The common trait of this tragedy has been the people being in the middle, the people that still today pay the consequences.
A Femen activist, Sarah Constantin, is hanged from a noose-like rope from a Paris bridge to call attention to the large number of executions in Iran as she stages a protest against visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Paris, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. A near-naked woman hanging from a noose-like rope from a Paris bridge has sent a message to visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
In “Speech/Acts,” a group exhibition organized by Meg Onli at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Tiona Nekkia McClodden stood out as artists who take up voices, histories, and experiences that can help audiences move forward and endure in the future.
A computer game as a data visualizer - a daily reenactment of the total number of USA gun homicides since January 1st, 2018.
The project works from a daily update of gun homicides as scraped from the Gun Violence Archive.
The National Gallery's long-standing sponsorship arrangement with weapons manufacturer Finmeccanica has ended, following a campaign by Campaign Against Arms Trade to 'Disarm the Gallery.' The arrangement has been terminated one year early and just weeks before the next protest event was planned.
Matthew Shepard was attacked by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson on October 7, 1998, the victim of an anti-gay hate crime. He was pronounced dead on October 12th. Shepard's funeral was protested by Fred Phelps, notorious leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. The protesters bore signs with phrases such as, "God hates Fags", "No tears for Queens", and "Fag Matt in hell".
VOA NEWS March 29, 2012 By Nico Colombant
WASHINGTON--A Sudanese artist from the restive Blue Nile region is using art and activism to promote the plight of people caught between borders and conflict.
In an audio montage of memories from refugees, the sounds of gunfire and explosions mix with crying babies. Narrator Michelle Orecchio describes how to reverse war's grip on so much of humanity.
The Confined Hearts Project is creating 1468 terracotta anatomical human hearts, one for each person seeking asylum in Australia but being held in detention on Manus Island and in Nauru. Hundreds of people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures have been involved in making the hearts to date.
Faced with a lack of prosecution of those accused of crimes against humanity committed during Argentina’s military dictatorship, family members and descendants of the country’s estimated 30,000 disappeared took action.
Marking the six month anniversary of September 11th, a poster designed by artist Hans Haacke appeared on scaffolding and media walls throughout New York City. The poster itself was blank and white, consisting only of die-cut silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers. The posters effectively reminded the pubic that September 11th created a ubiquitous filter through which everyday realities have become measured or seen.
‘Since Plotinus’, writes Joseph Tanke (2019, p. 486), ‘Western art has been consecrated to beauty, and beautiful art has been understood as the achievement of good form’. But alongside this interest in beauty and form, art has been committed to politics and perspectives, equity and rights. Consequently, and particularly since the start of the modern era, artists frequently initiate or participate in ‘difficult conversations’.
The Guggenheim Museum in New York City temporarily closed off its entrance on Saturday afternoon, November 11, after eight artists and cultural workers took to the institution’s iconic spiral ramp to denounce the Israeli military’s ongoing killing of Palestinian children in Gaza.
The prints exhibited June 2013 at Firestorm in Asheville NC, will comprise two separate bodies of work; Chelsea Ragan’s combination screen print / woodblock print / painting / drawings graphically detail police shootings of young black males from across the country, and Adam Void’s hand-painted screen prints state the facts of important national news stories that have been swept under the rug of mainstream corporate media.
"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.
The collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle, a group of Kinshasa street performers turn their bodies into living sculptures, and use them to political ends. Among the artists is Jared, who regularly takes to the streets dressed as Robot Annonce. The costume, made from broken radio parts, is designed to raise awareness of fake news. “People receive so much incorrect information and many inaccuracies are spread. I want to fight this,” says Jared.
If Not Now, When? is an ongoing exhibition that showcases the work of 31 female sculptors, employing diverse materials and forms to address social and environmental issues such as gender equality, nuclear disarmament, and electronic waste. The Hepworth Wakefield in England is hosting the exhibition from April 3 to July 4, 2023.
Syrian Journey: Choose your own escape route
The Syrian conflict has torn the country apart, leaving thousands dead and driving millions to flee their homes. Many seek refuge in neighboring countries but others pay traffickers to take them to Europe - risking death, capture and deportation.
ART COLLECTIVE LUZINTERRUPTUS has created an installation made up of 100 glowing “radioactive” figures for the Dockville Festival in Hamburg.
The human-size figures appear to be wearing special white protective clothing and marching, heads down, across the landscape. The eerie structures contain a number of lights which make them appear to glow ominously in the dark.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered a Berlin landmark with thousands of refugee life jackets for his latest installation. The striking display was the activist's attempt to highlight the scale of migrants taking to the seas every day.
The Vivienne Foundation exists to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Vivienne's creativity and activism.
Since the start of her career in the 1970s, Vivienne was renowned not only for her fashion design, but also her activism. Vivienne always utilised her platform of prestige to make the world a better place.
On February 14, 2012, three female college student volunteers wore blood-stained wedding dresses and appeared as "wounded brides" in Beijing Qianmen Pedestrian Street.
Michelle Obama tweeted her own portrait holding a sign reading #BringBackOurGirls and soon countless celebrities echoed this meme online. Throughout a week, this trending hashtag had been turned into a social-media supernova. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign spurred by online sharing brought the outrage against Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping to the global stage.
As the rest of the world continues to dump buckets of cold water over their heads in support of ALS research, some Palestinians have created their own version of the Ice Bucket Challenge to raise awareness about the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
"The President Sang Amazing Grace" tells the story of the 2015 attack that claimed nine lives at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. It first appeared on Zoe's 2017 album "Small Brown Birds" and was widely played on independent folk radio shows across the US. Since then, the song has taken on a larger life, inspiring a variety of artists and finding its way to new audiences.