In 1982, for documenta 7, Beuys proposed a plan to plant 7000 oaks throughout the city of Kassel, each paired with a basalt stone. The 7000 stones were piled up on the lawn in front of the Museum Fridericianum with the idea that the pile would shrink every time a tree was planted. The project, seen locally as a gesture towards green urban renewal, took five years to complete and has spread to other cities around the world.
Maryland Hall, in partnership with the Banneker Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, invited Maryland-based Black artists, whose work encapsulates activism and social justice and using the creative process to educate their audiences about diversity, equity and inclusion to send proposals to take one of six 5 ft.
On September 5th, 1991, I put a giant condom over Jesse Helms’ house. Why? Because, as the condom said, “Helms is deadlier than a virus.” Senator Jesse Helms was one of the chief architects of AIDS-related stigma in the U.S. He fought against any federal spending on HIV research, treatment or prevention.
Artist Michael Landy catalogued, inventoried, and systemically destroyed all of his possessions for the 2001 public installation Break Down, commissioned by British arts organization Artangel. It took him three years just to itemize the 7,227 objects included in the project.
Empty chairs were laid out in Sarajevo today in honour of the 11,541 people killed in the city during the Bosnian war which began exactly 20 years ago.
The seats - lined up along the city's main street - were left empty in memory of the victims of the 44-month Serb siege of the city.
Hundreds of the chairs are small representing the children slain in the conflict.
“Mapping skin deep” is an audiovisual public installation consisting of portraits with testimonies from refugee/undocumented immigrants currently residing in Montreal and elsewhere. Their bodies have been scarred in post-production tracing the route they took from their homeland to Montreal, hence mapping them skin deep.
Alzayer put cages around Boston's "Make Way for Ducklngs" statues, separating the baby duckling statues from the mother. The original statues were created in 1987 by Nancy Schon and the mallard family is based on the children's book by Robert McCloskey.
ODBK is an activist organization that aims to create a more equal, diverse, inclusive, transparent and democratic art world. ODBK seeks to do this by diversify and increase the number of people who understand and engage with contemporary art.
The Creativity Movement (formerly known as the World Church of the Creater) is a self proclaimed white supremacist organization with factions across the United States. In 2004, a high ranking leader of the Montana based faction defected from the group, but not before donating over 4,000 of the group's bibles called the 'RAHOWA' (acronym for racial holy war) to the Montana Human Rights Network.
The Balloon Project, is a three-year-in-the-making Art Installation by Yan Kong in support of world refugees and migrants. It pays tribute to human spirit, courage and survival. The Balloon Project is a multimedia work incorporating mechanical engineering and visuals to fuse art and politics. 32 balloons inflate and deflate to simulate refugee and migrants' breathing while fleeing their countries to seek safety and freedom in the world.
A giant art installation targets predator drone operators
In military slang, Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, since viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.
As we’ve already found out, gender inequality exists in all parts of the world, but besides discriminative attitudes, women also suffer from wage discrimination.
According to statistics, women’s earnings in the US “were 77% of men’s in 2011”, while in Switzerland, women earned “roughly 20% less than equally skilled men in comparable positions”.
A striking new cultural space is taking shape in New York’s Hudson Valley. Alex Grey and Allyson Grey, co-founders of CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to build Entheon, sanctuary of visionary art, to ask for support to complete the build.
Peter Marks Review from the Washington Post:
“As Far as My Fingertips Take Me,” a performance piece about the ordeal of seeking refuge by Tania El Khoury that’s being presented for the next 2½ weeks in the lobby of Woolly Mammoth Theatre. For this hypnotic, one-audience-member-at-a-time experience, you pass through the door of a white-walled booth and slip into a white lab coat before putting on a pair of headphones.
The Last Billboard is a 36-foot art installation located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Created in 2013, it features a steel frame and removable wooden letters that must be arranged by hand. Each month a different artist, activist or individual is invited by creator and curator, Jon Rubin, to come and utilize the billboard space. The participants share messages over this medium in the form of thoughtful questions, esoteric musings, or other visual means.
Artist and activist Niki Lopez is a survivor. From age 11 to 25, she was trapped in a religious cult in Georgia, where she was separated from the rest of her family. The cult's leader sexually abused her. But in 2000, Lopez escaped and worked with the FBI to put him in prison. She was later given a humanitarian award from the FBI for her help in putting her abuser behind bars.
Coal Seam Greed was going to be a simple satire showing Katso and Nowhereman posing as a mining company called Reed Gas and erecting notices stating their intent to explore for unconventional gas or CSG in inner-city Brisbane. The idea was that residents would see the signs, phone and leave messages in response, which would then be incorporated into the video.
The Vulvatron was created specifically for Burning Man 2014. A multi-sensory experience, the Vulvatron attempts to communicate to those whom interact with it a distinctly feminine mystery. What is woman? In a world that has politicized, exoticized, sexualized, objectified, made their stake in women, what remains? Creating a gigantic object inspired by female anatomy in a world surrounded by phallic objects is a medicine story in itself.
Installed on the occasion of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I want a president renders a poignant portrait of the cultural and political climate in the early 1990s in New York City with words that still resonate today.
“Gravity of Equilibrium” revolves around Mass Shootings in USA. Mass shootings and guns are an incredibly divisive topics, one that is nearly impossible to engage opposing viewpoints in a discussion about. The majority of gun related debates devolve into charged arguments with parties feeling threatened. This effectively creates an environment where new perspectives and inputs are unable to be processed.
In October and November 2016, Breathing Lights illuminated the windows of hundreds of vacant buildings in Albany, Schenectady and Troy, NY. Warm light filled each window with a diffuse glow that mimicked the gentle rhythm of human breathing. Concentrated in neighborhoods with high levels of vacancy, Breathing Lights transformed abandoned structures from pockets of shadows into places of warmth.
Organized in large part by Project Laundry List, in 2007 a four-hundred foot clothesline was strung in front of Hydro-Quebec headquarters to protest their destruction of the Rupert River and the traditional hunting grounds of the Cree and Innu so that people in the US and along the border can dry their clothes in a tumble dryer. Project Laundry List promotes clotheslines as a simple way for America to save 10% on its residential energy bill!