For one artist, the ugly and the beautiful are equivalent concepts. In 2018, designer and artist Choi Jeong Hwa featured an exhibition titled 'Alchemy' at The Artling where he uses recycled and non-biodegradable materials in his work that he has been collecting for 30 years, such as household trash, glass, and steel. 'Dandelion' is one of his masterpieces installed in the outdoors in Seoul, South Korea.
Amongst the European network of cultural institutions there has been widespread recognition that the climate crisis is a cultural crisis. In 2019 members of the European Theatre Forum convened and adopted the Dresden Convention, a revolutionary text that aimed to lower the carbon footprint and better the sustainable practices of the theatre and cultural sector at large.
Conceived and curated by Bushwick native Joe Ficalora, the Bushwick Collective has evolved into an extraordinary open-air gallery since its first mural surfaced in 2011.
Attracting a wondrous array of local, national and international artists, it showcases first-rate street art -- from legendary Blek Le Rat stencils to huge collaborative walls by such world-renowned artists as Case Ma'Claim and Pixel Pancho.
Western Flag depicts the site of the 'Lucas Gusher' - the world's first major oil find - in Spindletop, Texas in 1901, now barren and exhausted. The site is recreated as a digital simulation the center of which is marked by a flagpole spewing and endless stream of black smoke.
The odd spaces exiting under bridges and viaducts around the world are often left aside, urban spatial residues mostly abandoned or occupied informally by homeless people drug users etc. The former pro boxer Nilson Garrido saw the space under the Alcantara Machado viaduct (in the Mooca neighborhood of Sao Paulo) as an opportunity to create a Boxing Academy.
An artist who sparked significant awareness regarding the issues of climate change was Olafur Eliasson. Eliasson’s main objective has been to catch people’s attention and make them feel emotions and care about climate change because many people do not connect to the effects of climate issues as they do with other controversial impacts solely because the effects are not played out directly in front of them.
The Repellent Fence is a social collaborative project among individuals, communities, institutional organizations, publics, and sovereigns that culminate with the establishment of a large-scale temporary monument located near Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora. This 2 mile long ephemeral land-art installation is comprised of 26 tethered balloons, that are each 10 feet in diameter, and float 100 feet above the desert landscape.
HONG KONG — It started when a single box of free sanitary pads appeared in a middle school classroom in October. Then a plastic container with pads was attached to the walls of four bathrooms in a university in Shanghai. By Monday, boxes and bags of individually wrapped pads had popped up outside bathrooms in at least 338 schools and colleges across China. Each carried a version of the same instructions: “Take one, then put one back later.
Together with a group of homeless New Yorkers, Wodiczko constructed the Homesless Vehicle as an instrument of survival for urban nomads. A modified shopping cart that facilitates refundable bottle and can collection, it also provides temporary shelter. As a house on wheels intended for New York City sidewalks, the Homeless Vehicle embodies Wodicko’s practice of ‘Interrogative Design’.
If something is a total opposite to war, that is the practice of yoga. Concentrating or relaxing your muscles and mind in order to release tension, is something a soldier would never have the luxury to do under the dangerous circumstances of war.
Inventor Dan Abramson thought of a amazingly creative and beautiful way to connect the two, by creating “Yoga Joes”, a series of simple green plastic army men that have some killer… yoga moves.
Activists are working to bring a steel sculpture of a 45-foot-tall nude woman to Washington, where she will temporarily face the White House from a perch on the National Mall.
Transporting the sculpture from its home in San Francisco will be an undertaking, but its artist, Marco Cochrane, said he saw it as an opportunity to start a conversation about violence against women.
Keith Haring is known to be one of the biggest artists raising awareness for HIV and AIDS, considering he had also passed away from HIV. Starting his career covering ads with spray paint and chalk in subway stations in New York City, his work started trending and he became an activist for this cause.
Natalie Ball’s work challenges dominant stories of Native American identities, taking to task the historical and visual legacies that misrepresent what it means to be “Indian.” She dives deeply into Indigenous histories and forms of knowledge, the use of language, and a wide range of materials—including animal hides, clothing, and synthetic hair—to create a new narrative around Indigenous experiences and identities.
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.
The US-Mexico border wall has become a battleground for political theater, but also various artistic interventions. One of these outstanding artworks is the pink seesaws. They went viral after they were installed by the two creative architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello. Between the erect giant steel posts of the border fence lie small gaps a couple of inches apart. It is this space where they installed the seesaws.
When Fred Wilson did an installation at the Maryland Historical Society in 1992, he shook up the museum world. Co-sponsored by the historical society and the Contemporary Museum, Mining the Museum did not involve artwork made by the artist; rather, it involved reinstalling items from the historical society's collection in such a way as to make us reconsider them.
Operation Christmas was a campaign launched by the Colombian military during the Christmas season to encourage FARC guerrillas to demobilize.[1] The military selected nine 75-foot trees along paths the insurgents used and decorated them with Christmas lights and a message encouraging them to come home.
In 2017, the political party Ahora Buenos Aires (Now Buenos Aires) was running in the legislative election for the first time. It is not easy being a small left-wing party in the City of Buenos Aires, therefore imagination is an essential part of a campaign if you want to get the attention of the media and voters.
‘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 California Department of Corrections (CDC) has unveiled a new billboard campaign to defend the domestic spying operations of the National Security Agency (NSA). On July 23, 2013 the CDC successfully apprehended, rehabilitated and discharged a billboard at Bayshore Boulevard near Sunnydale Avenue in San Francisco. The CDC released the corrected ad one day before a U.S.
Six months before Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, a group of Puerto Rican artists were invited to participate in a residency program in Miami by local art organizations. The artists were offered abandoned storefronts-turned-studios at a historic downtown mall, where they’d exhibit their work during Miami Art Week in December to engage an art world that often overlooks the island territory.
A large chair installation work featuring the Chinese name of detained artist and activist Ai Weiwei was set up in Taipei Saturday --the 22nd anniversary of the Tiananmen SquareMassacre -- to call for Ai's release.
Bei Ling, an artist from China who has been barred from enteringhis home country since 2000, used 1,001 empty chairs to piece together the three characters of Ai's name in Liberty Square at 6: 04p.m.