For the past five years, we’ve screened SIMA juried films in communities and classrooms across six continents and witnessed an increasing demand to use the inspirational force of documentary filmmaking to build a global digital community around today’s most pressing issues.
Shortly after the close of this year’s International Women’s Day, China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo shut down Feminist Voices. With 180,000 followers, the group’s social media account was one of the most important advocacy channels for spreading information about women’s issues in China, but in an instant, it was gone. A few hours later, the private messaging app WeChat also shuttered an account for the group.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News:
By Andrea Long-Chavez
The recognizable figure of a Latino gardener is a common sight for most Southern California locals. But if you happen to see the cardboard painting of a gardener propped up against a chain link fence or hedge, chances are you’ve just seen the public art of Los Angeles-based artist Rarmio Gomez, Jr.
Decolonize Me features six contemporary Aboriginal artists whose works challenge, interrogate and reveal Canada’s long history of colonization in daring and innovative ways.
It’s women’s history month, and your favorite radical feminist avengers want you to go ape. The Guerrilla Girls have been making noise about gender and racial inequality in the art world since 1985. Fighting discrimination with a sense of humor and their signature faux fur, these masked feminists continue to challenge major museums to spotlight more women and artists of color.
TED TALK:
I consider it my life's mission to convey the urgency of climate change through my work. I've traveled north to the Arctic to the capture the unfolding story of polar melt, and south to the Equator to document the subsequent rising seas. Most recently, I visited the icy coast of Greenland and the low-lying islands of the Maldives, connecting two seemingly disparate but equally endangered parts of our planet.
Women's collectives and feminist groups occupied the National Commission of Human Rights demanding results to several neglected, open investigations of feminicide in the country. During the occupation, they interviewed the portraits of historical "national heroes" with spray-paint, glitter, markers, and liquid paint.
After artists learned that London's Design Museum was connected to Leonardo, a large arms dealing company, and hosted an event for them, many of the artists featured in their Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-2018 asked the museum for their work to be removed. After receiving no response, one third of the show's artists removed their work from the show.
CultureStrike in partnership with Mariposas Sin Fronteras , End Family Detention and 15 artists from across the country, brings you Visions From The Inside, a visual art project inspired by letters penned by detained migrants.
The project (created in 2009-2010) consists of painted plats and posters depicted with drawings of police torture scenes. Images also include snippets of email exchanges. The plates have been exhibited in numerous galleries in Ukraine, and posters were hung in public spaces.
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.
"Surround Congress”: as soon as we’d heard this, in our minds we were there. To make the Government resign and demand they start a new constituent process seemed like a great idea. We immediately got to work.
Indian Act speaks of the realities of colonization - the effects of contact, and its often-broken and untranslated contracts. The piece consists of all 56 pages of the Federal Government’s Indian Act mounted on stroud cloth and sewn over with red and white glass beads. Each word is replaced with white beads sewn into the document; the red beads replace the negative space.
Thrive Collective mobilizes students, parents, artists, and community stakeholders to partner with public schools for transformational change. They function both as a matchmaker and direct service provider of arts and mentoring programs that cultivate the character and competencies necessary for students to thrive in today’s world.
Ghostbikes.org is intended to be a site for the worldwide cycling
community where those lost on dangerous streets can
be remembered by their loved ones, members of their local communities,
and others from around the world. They also hope to inspire more people to
start installing ghost bikes in their communities and to initiate
changes that will make us all safer on the streets.
At 12:00 noon (New York time) on November 19, 2016, Chinese artist Ning Kong, wearing a wedding dress with hundred dove, appeared at the 911 site in New York. Even though the theme of performance art is calling for peace, the police banned it and showed the handcuffs because doing performance art was not allowed at the 9/11 site. So Kong Ning turned to Times Square, New York, successfully completing her performance art.
In 2003 Amsterdam police headquarters decided their security cameras needed a little bling after Jill Magid approached them through her company System Azure Security Ornamentation. Originally turned down as an artist proposal, Magid founded her company as a possible means of executing her project. It worked. Not only did she receive the proper permits to beautify police security cameras, but the city paid her to do it.
Back after a five year hiatus, V-Day Sedona joins with hundreds of other productions across the globe in celebrating V-Day’s 20th anniversary with an act of artistic activism. For its 20th anniversary, V-Day is calling on activists around the world to Rise, Resist and Unite.
"Beginning in 1910, the Mexican Revolution spawned a cultural renaissance, inspiring artists to look inward in search of a specifically Mexican artistic language. This visual vocabulary was designed to transcend the realm of the arts and give a national identity to this population undergoing transition.
Over the course of 3 years, from 2006 until 2009, the production team behind the film Wasteland (2010), also known as "Lixo Extraordinário" followed Brazilian, Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist, Vik Muniz, as he traveled back to Brazil to create self portraits with the catadores (tr. garbage pickers) of Jardim Gramacho, one of the largest city dumps in the Americas.
Louise Bourgeois is a well known French-American artist born in Paris in 1911. Much of her artwork is geared towards female empowerment as she puts focus on the trials and tribulations of what it is like being a woman in a patriarchal society. As a result, many people associate her with the feminist movement. This idea of feminism can be seen in some of Bourgeois’ artwork, which resembles women empowerment.
Many citizens of the United States have spoken out against Trump by organizing, protesting, voting, writing and making art. Most of us have hoped for the impeachment of this inept, cruel, lying and corrupt con man who is a danger to our country and to the world. We the people of the United States will continue to speak out and fight against Trump.
(Honoring our Origins, Ourselves and our Dreams) is an all-womyn and womyn-identified crew from the northeast San Fernando Valley dedicated to creating awareness through public art.