Projects tagged "China"

Call for Remove Homophobic Chinese Textbooks
Practitioner:
Chen Qiuya, other LGBT human right activists
Date:
Nov 1 2015
In November 2015, Chinese LGBT activist Chen Qiuyan met with government officials in Beijing after months of campaigning to have the Ministry of Education remove textbooks which identify homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of recognized mental disorders, after the Chinese government decriminalized consensual homosexual acts in 1997.
Protest in Inner Mongolia against CCP's Mandarin-only Education
Practitioner:
Ethnic Mongolians in China
Date:
Sep 1 2020
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians have protested across northern China in opposition to Beijing plans to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in some school subjects.
Study of Perspective (& Stools)
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Jan 1 2014
The son of an exiled political dissident, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s work is inherently political. Since 1995 Ai Weiwei has been traveling the world, photographing himself flipping off iconic monuments of power in his Study of Perspective series.
Cao Fei’s Whose Utopia?
Practitioner:
Cao Fei
Date:
Sep 1 2005
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.
Female students in Guangzhou protest topless for gender equality
Practitioner:
Female students from the Guangdong University of Technology
Date:
Apr 21 2014
Female students from the Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou called for equal job opportunities and for people to "pay attention to the value of women" while protesting on the school's campus, shirtless and covered in body paint. The photos, taken by ogling passersby, have been circulating on Weibo and naturally netizens stand divided on whether the semi-naked protests were empowering or counterproductive...
Love Queer Cinema Week (aka the Beijing Queer Film Festival)
Practitioner:
Students of Beijing University, Beijing Queer Film Festival commitee
Date:
Dec 1 2001
Founded 19 years ago, the Beijing Queer Film Festival (aka Love Queer Cinema Week) is one of the grassroots film festivals in China focusing on independent queer film screenings and cultural exchange activities. We aim to expand public discussions on sexuality / gender identity / gender expression, we aim to give a platform to sexual and other minorities in China and the World, and we celebrate diversity.
Nongfu Spring Market
Practitioner:
Brother Nut
Date:
Jun 1 2018
The 9,000 bottles of water on display at an art gallery in Beijing last month appeared identical to those of Nongfu Spring, one of China’s most popular spring water brands, with one jarring difference. Inside each bottle was brown, murky groundwater collected from a Chinese village.
Dance with ghost, Student using dance to protest the corrupt Chinese tradition
Practitioner:
Frebel Crew, a street dance club of students at Guangxi University of Finance and Economics
Date:
Nov 20 2020
A viral video of a student dance performance in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has won praise for speaking out against so-called ghost marriages, which many today see as an archaic and even dangerous tradition.
Cancer Baby's Kimo Kawa House
Practitioner:
Lu Yang
Date:
Apr 12 2014
Lu Yang attempts to bring the negative notion of Cancer cell into a “Kimo Kawa” object of love and/or pain and hopes to open a dialogue that brings awareness to the acceptance and tolerance of living with cancer cells.
“Rice Bunny” (米兔) #MeToo Code on Chinese Social Media
Practitioner:
Chinese Netizens
Date:
Apr 5 2018
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.
Future Vote
Practitioner:
Action Office
Date:
Jan 13 2024
This project is a participatory art action initiated by the Action Office in 2024.
I Have Never Eaten These Tiny Grapes by Zuoxiao Zuzhou: 'China's Leonard Cohen' Calls Out Political Corruption
Practitioner:
Zuxiao Zuzhou, Ai Weiwei
Date:
Jan 1 2013
Zuoxiao Zuzhou is a Chinese singer whose accented, croaky voice is hardly ever in tune. But for his fans he's the voice of a generation — one of the very few voices who dare to speak out. After a collaboration, Cowboy Junkies member Michael Timmins called him "China's Leonard Cohen."
Bishan Project: Utopia in a Chinese Village
Practitioner:
Ou Ning
Date:
Jun 5 2011
“There are many problems in rural areas. For example, agriculture is declining, no one is farming, traditional things are falling apart, farmers are brainwashed by the idea of urbanization, and they don’t like their hometown. They all want to move to the city.”Activist Ou Ning said. Rural construction is an important issue. As an activist, he chose Bishan village in Anhui, China as the field to start his experiment, which is “Bishan Project”.
Chinese Feminist Act Against Sexual Harassment on Subway
Practitioner:
Zheng Xi
Date:
Dec 1 2017
Zheng Xi 郑熹, a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on gender studies at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Zheng has launched a campaign asking city governments around China to display anti-sexual-harassment logos, complete with a groper’s “salty-pig hand” visual (etymological context here), alongside other commonly displayed public safety logos on places like subway trains and buses.
Local artist stages demonstration inspired by protesters in China
Practitioner:
Yolanda He Yang
Date:
Dec 11 2022
Late last month, Chinese citizens took up a creative means of protest over the nation’s strict “zero-COVID” policy. In a place with little tolerance for large public demonstrations, protesters have been holding up blank pieces of paper. Their ingenuity inspired a local artist Yolanda He Yang to stage a public art demonstration to subtly communicate their dissent.
Reporter's viral eye roll causes trouble with Chinese censors
Practitioner:
Liang Xiangyi
Date:
Mar 1 2018
By Steven Jiang, CNN https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/asia/china-viral-eye-roll-intl/index.html (CNN)It was the eye roll that resonated with millions -- and broke the internet in China.
Echoes of Defiance: Xiao Lu and the Impact of 'Dialogue' on Art and Society
Practitioner:
Xiao Lu
Date:
Jan 1 1989
Xiao Lu was one of the most influential women in contemporary Chinese art, better known for provoking performance art works and sharp social commentaries. Her works address sensitive social and cultural issues that counter mainstream attitudes and values. In 1989, she put her work "Dialogue" up for exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
Heritage loss and the Importance of the Past
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Jan 1 1995
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) by Ai Weiwei is a highly provocative work of art. This series of three black and white photographs portray the artist holding a 2,000-year-old Han dynasty urn that, frame by frame, he drops, it falls, and shatters. As much a work of photography as a work of performance art, in each still an unaffected Ai looks directly at the camera aware of his destructiveness.
Interwoven Threads: The Art of Community and Sensory Expansion
Practitioner:
Sebastián Mahaluf
Date:
Sep 1 2023
Sebastián Mahaluf stands out as an artist deeply engaged in weaving the complex threads of human connection, community, and the interplay of personal and collective experiences. His notable work, "CONTRADICTION AND TENSION," showcases his approach to art as a participatory experience that bridges individual perceptions with communal narratives.
menstrual pad mutual aid boxes
Practitioner:
Chinese University Students
Date:
Oct 30 2020
Since 2020, university students across China have launched a grassroots initiative to combat menstrual stigma by placing “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in campus restrooms. These boxes, often accompanied by signs reading “Take one if you need it, donate if you can,” provide free sanitary pads to anyone caught off guard by their period—offering both practical relief and a symbolic challenge to the cultural silence surrounding menstruation.
"Waste" Sculpture
Practitioner:
Zhou Zhenfeng
Date:
May 15 2016
In 2016, Zhou Zhenfeng, who was a student at a college in Hebei at the time, discovered that there were a lot of waste tires in the streets and alleys. Zhou Zhenfeng learned that tires are made of infusible or refractory polymer elastic materials. It takes hundreds of years for these materials to decompose in the soil to the extent that they do not affect the growth of plants.
Rare protests against China’s ‘zero covid’ policy erupt across country
Practitioner:
Lily Kuo, The Washington Post
Date:
Nov 27 2022
Protests erupted in cities and on campuses across China this weekend as frustrated and outraged citizens took to the streets in a stunning wave of demonstrations against the government’s “zero covid” policy and the leaders enforcing it.
"Dying to Survive": A Movie on Generic Drugs
Practitioner:
Director Muye Wen (文牧野）, Yong Lu (陆勇)
Date:
Aug 7 2019
The screen portrayal of a cancer sufferer whose illegal import of foreign medicines into China spurred national policy changes has become a box-office smash as audiences flock to a rare Chinese film on a hot-button issue. Dying To Survive is based on Lu Yong, who was arrested in 2013 after illegally importing a generic cancer drug in a case that sparked public debate about high medical costs.
Embarking on a journey through a sea of theater
Practitioner:
CGTN
Date:
Jul 6 2023
China's only seaside theater festival has been held in the resort town of Aranya in north China's Hebei Province. Artists from around the world traveled there to take deep dive into the world of dramatic performance. For theatergoers, there were interactive activities including cross-border installations such as seaside talks, environmental drama readings, screenings, theater houses, parades and bonfires by the sea.
Living and Killing in Modern China: "A Touch of Sin"
Practitioner:
Zhangke Jia (贾樟柯)
Date:
May 17 2013
"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.

Pages