This is the sixth piece of the series Tatlin’s Whisper which examines the relationship between apathy and anaesthetization of the images in the mass media. This series intends to activate images, well-known because of having been repeatedly seen in the press, but are here decontextualized from the original event that gave way to the news and staged as realistically as possible in an art institution.
What happens to explicitly political art when it’s placed inside of the White Cube? Paint the Protest, a group show curated by Nancy Spector at Off Paradise self-consciously poses this question, and further aims to reveal the place and purpose of activist art in general.
This demonstration was in response to a new law (as of June, 2012) imposing fines for unauthorized protest of up to $20,000 for organizers and $10,000 for participants. After activists were turned down for a more traditional protest, Lyudmila Alexandrova and others set up small dolls, teddy bears, and figurines with demonstration slogans. Two mini protests took place in January 7 and January 14, 2012.
From March 29 to April 28, 2012, artist Angel Chen transformed Toronto's Whippersnapper Gallery into a pop-up call centre to field questions on the financial crisis. Phone lines were manned by passers-by, volunteers and guest operators, all of whom solicited callers for discussion about the current economic climate.
At a time when the city of Portland was considering stripping Martin Luther King Jr.'s name off a local street, a covert organization calling itself Group X changed the name of another downtown street to Malcolm X Street in a clandestine overnight action.
Anonymous urban artists set up art installations, large nest eggs, at several locations in Skopje, wanting to alarm the growing number of trees in the city.
In the nest read a message "You cut all the trees, where do we make nests? Birds".
In 2008, my work as an artist took me to a gigantic landfill outside Rio de Janeiro called Jardim Gramacho. After operating for more than 30 years, the sanitary facility, once one of the largest in the world, had reached its maximum capacity and was on the eve of closing permanently.
DISAPPEARED IN AMERICA is an ongoing project by Visible Collective/Naeem Mohaiemen that uses films, installations, and lectures to trace migration impulses, hyphenated identities, and the post-9/11 security panic. Excerpts of the project have been shown at various venues, including the 2006 Whitney Biennial.
From Public Delivery:
Located behind a resplendent Opera House in Budapest on the same road as Louis Vuitton sits Hunger King, a place that seems to be just like any other burger joint. However, it is anything but. Hunger King is a regular fast food outlet that is pushed onto the masses; Hunger King is a critical sociopolitical art installation that highlights Hungary’s significant crises of social inequality and homelessness .
"Artbus is a non-profit organization devoted to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary art. Supported by contributions from individuals, foundations and corporations Artbus facilitates public access to current artistic expressions and fosters creativity and production by living artists.
KASHGAR, China — They come for the camel rides, the chance to dress up like a conquering Qing dynasty soldier or to take selfies in front of one of the most historic Islamic shrines in Xinjiang, the sprawling region in China’s far northwest.
order Crossers comprise a series of lightweight robotic sculptures that poetically explore the notion of borders and boundary conditions. The inflatable sculptures rise up to several stories high and extend across a given threshold. Their choreographed performance, originating on both sides of the border, would stage a symbolic connection.
School desks placed by parents, district graduates and activists block a street in front of the Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters in a demonstration against student dropout rates Tuesday, April 8, 2014, in downtown Los Angeles. Protest organizers say the 375 desks are there to represent the 375 students who drop out of the district every week during the school year.
Richard Bell has often called himself ‘an activist masquerading as an artist’. Aboriginal journalist and radio broadcaster Daniel Browning has suggested that Bell is also ‘a megaphone.
Omelia Contadina was born out of the concern of JR and director Alice Rohrwacher for the difficulties encountered by many small farmers and inhabitants of the Alfina plateau, in Italy.
Reversing decades of discrimination set into place when New Deal labor laws intentionally excluded domestic workers, New York State in 2010 passed the very first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Hawaii and California followed soon after with other states soon to follow.
Park(ing) day is a community of artists, activist, students and everyday people who, on September 21, every year and across the world, collaborate to transform parking spaces into green and friendly spaces. They invite reflections and discussions on the significance of nature and quality of life in urban areas. Park(ing) day encourages people to take over public spaces, reclaim their space, and imagine how sustainable and green cities can be.
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.
In 2005, Rebar, a design studio in San Francisco, transformed a single metered parking space into a temporary public park. The area where this two-hour park took place was one that lacked public open space. This was the first Park(ing) Day project.
"A few months ago artists John Peña, Jon Rubin, and Dawn Weleski opened Conflict Kitchen, a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries that the United States is in conflict with. Nowadays the Iranian food is served at the counter. More precisely, the kubideh, a dish made of grilled ground meat in freshly baked barbari bread with onion, mint, and basil.
A young man melting into a puddle of himself is something you don’t see everyday, much less in a busy public square. Yet this humourous but surprisingly effective spectacle is the latest effort by the Red Cross of Argentina to raise awareness about climate change.
Judy Chicago, the pioneering feminist artist who made the iconic 1970s work The Dinner Party, has enjoyed a long and illustrious career rife with critical approval. Now, in anticipation of Earth Day 2020, Chicago is launching a new project called Create Art For Earth, wherein people from all over the world can submit their own creations to the campaign via a corresponding hashtag. “This is no time for abstractions,” the call for art reads.
IT all looked so normal: a dozen diners chatting over coffee and hash browns at an outdoor cafe near the waterfront here on an August morning. The cook flipped eggs, a dog sniffed for scraps, and the young woman in the black sweater suspected nothing of the spies and confederates sprinkled throughout. They’d been studying her life for four months and were finally preparing to pull it through the looking glass they’d constructed.
"The massive "Above and Beyond Memorial" will be installed at the National Veterans Art Museum, The Harold Washington Library, and go on display starting Feb. 20, culminating a painstaking search to find a suitable — although temporary — home for the 58,000 replica dog tags honoring those who died as a result of their service in the war that stretched from March 1965 to May 1975.
Filip Custic (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain 1993) works across photography, performance and video to address themes around identity, body and our relationship with technology. Mirrors and screens are a recurring features, a reference to our age of image-obsession and selfies, and Custic also uses symbols, references to science, and art-historical borrowings in his art.