Maria was psyched to travel to the Philippines where her hand-made basketball nets were well received. Invited with the Institute for Infinitely Small Things (Boston/Mass based) by Clara Balaguer and the Office of Culture and Design (Manila) she worked in Zamboanga City with students of Western Mindanao State University to carry out a 6 day arts and activism workshop.
On completion the 100 Faces project will consist of 100 Portraits of Americans who have been to the theaters of war in Iraq or Afghanistan (OEF,OIF). Each portrait is accompanied by a placard featuring a statement written by the person pictured and a brief biography of the person pictured. The biographical information and the statement reflect the person at the time of the creation of the portrait.
The term “Afrofuturism” was coined in the 1990s by the cultural critic Mark Dery, who recognized a preoccupation with the future in the work of a number of black artists. Ever since, it has remained a term that is retrospectively applied to seemingly disparate artists, from Missy Elliot to Toni Morrison. What unites the movement is a shared fascination with the black experience, particularly in America.
Dismaland was an experimental and interactive art installation that mimicked and mocked similar attractions and characters of the Disney franchise. He later referred to it as a ‘bemusement park.’ Although the bemusement park seemed to disappear as suddenly as it arrived, the exhibition lives on in the collective memory of the British public.
The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. We work as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, shared with us through conversations with affected communities.
French street artist Roti installed a 4-ton marble sculpture in Independence Square in Kiev Ukraine, as an expression of solidarity with government resistors and protestors. The sculpture depicts a woman's body emerging from water.
After eight days of fall/winter New York Fashion Week, the most prominent trend—pervading both the runways and streets—has been social and political activism. To outsiders, New York Fashion Week may seem trivial in a time of more pressing news, but beyond being an escape, it’s a representation of how art can comment on social and political issues.
The Paris-based collective Claire Fontaine displays a neon sign that spells the words ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ in Arabic. Since this sign was installed strategically above the gallery’s wall-length window – facing in the street – in the edition of the show I saw, at Parsons in New York, it interacted not only with Parsons’ exhibition site but also with the urban environment beyond it.
Courtoom sketches were, for many cases, the only glimpses into high profile trails that captivated the nation. Now, over 200 of these sketches by artists will be in the Library of Congress, ranging from cases such as The Rodney King trial, the Watergate scandal, and the Allen v. Farrow custody battle. While the Nation's Library will be collecting these sketches for their historic value, many seek to buy the "art" as an investment.