At a gallery within a shopping complex in the South Korean capital, a couple saw paint cans and brushes at their reach and use next to what was actually a finished portrait worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thinking the available paint and brushes was a signal to be a part of the art, they ended up technically vandalizing the artists' work.
"Brazilian artist Mundano is used to spending his time on the road and in the streets, making art as an act of protest. Known for leaving his colorful works of graffiti on walls around the world, Mundano is especially dedicated to issues of environmental and social justice and spotlighting the overlooked work of Brazil’s trash collectors through his Pimp My Carroça campaign.
The artist conceived the project as a collaborative exhibition featuring five art-as-response pieces to the student loan crisis and the pressure it causes upon graduates. In its original version, Öğüt invited Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Superflex, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler to present sculptures as collection points for public contribution to The Debt Collective, a student-debt canceling initiative launched by Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee.
As the summer warms up, bringing with it sleeveless tops, Xiao Meili, a women’s rights advocate, is collecting photos of women’s armpits. Her goal: to challenge a growing belief in China that a woman must have hair-free armpits to be attractive.
In the portrait Bester I, Mayotte, the sitter’s eyes stare directly at the camera, practically boring a hole in the lens. Their lips are painted white, their hair and ears adorned with clothespins. The self-portrait of Zanele Muholi is striking on its own, but it does not stand alone.
DOHA — In an interview with the Paris Review in 1993, the late Toni Morrison once said,
I think of beauty as an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence. It’s not even a quest. I think it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say it’s what we were born for.
In a massive act of ‘brand vandalism’ just two days before the launch of the UN COP21 Climate Conference, 600 anti-advertisement posters have been installed in outdoor media spaces throughout the streets of Paris. The posters display artwork from over 80 artists from 19 different countries, including big names such as Banksy-collaborator Paul Insect, Alex One, Know Hope, Escif, Cleon Peterson, Hyuro, Jimmy Cauty, Ron English and many others.
The rise in feminism and feminist advocacy has changed history forever in terms of how women are viewed and treated in society. Though great progress has been made, women are still fighting for their rights even today. Abortion and body vulnerability are just two issues that are still being confronted and fought for in the public view.
The Nahmads have been dealers in Modern art since Giuseppe Nahmad set up in Milan in 1957. But they have been the Warren Buffetts of the business, sticking to the tried and true. Now Joseph Nahmad, one of Giuseppe’s grandsons, is plunging into the shark pool of Contemporary art.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered a Berlin landmark with thousands of refugee life jackets for his latest installation. The striking display was the activist's attempt to highlight the scale of migrants taking to the seas every day.
The series "No Violence Against Women" depicts famous cartoon couples transformed into victims of abuse. The women are left bloodied and with black eyes with the slogan "What Kind of Man are You?" above. The images are a commentary on domestic violence and were released in honor of International Women's Day
Armed with a can of washable spray paint, an artist in Greater Manchester, England, has embarked on a worthy crusade: to rid the region of potholes… by drawing penises on them.
The anonymous artist, who goes by the name “Wanksy,” told the Manchester Evening News that he decided to draw attention to the “appalling” pothole-ridden streets after some of his cyclist friends were badly injured on the roads.
Fifty-six-year-old Dan Witz — who originally hails from Chicago but lives in Brooklyn — has been producing street art in New York since the seventies. And not just any street art. Wondrous works that trick the eye and often elude passersby altogether. Oh, but when one realizes what he or she is seeing, it’s pure revelation.
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.
NEW YORK, Ny., Nov 19, 2018 - Two artists, Actress/Creator/Native New Yorker Maia Lorian and collaborator veteran NYC Street Artist Abe Lincoln Jr. bring to you “A Presidential Parody.” In a nation that seems to place higher value on the American dollar over the American life, the artists felt it was time to release an ad campaign that reflects Trump’s “all American” values.
"Two weekends ago, a loose network of these artists and activists, under the name Subvertisers International, launched their first global effort to reclaim our shared public environment from its monopolization by commercial media. The demand was not for better or more truthful advertising, but to imagine what a city would look like when the stories we told ourselves in public space reflected a democratic voice.
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:
A group of Syrian artists in Damascus has created the world's biggest mural made of recycled materials, a rare work aimed at brightening public space in a city sapped by war and sanctions.
The brightly coloured, 720-sq metre work was constructed from aluminum cans, broken mirrors, bicycle wheels and other scrap objects and displayed on a street outside a primary school in the centre of the Syrian capital.
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.
The Xuzhou chained woman incident, also known as the Xuzhou eight-child mother incident, is a case of human trafficking, false imprisonment, sexual assault, severe mistreatment, and subsequent events that came to light in late January 2022 in Xuzhou's Feng County, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
500+ snowmen appeared outside the office of Senator Chuck Schumer in Melville Monday, Feb. 15, 2021. The snowmen appear to be placed there by climate activist @pricecarbonplz. (Source: Newsday, https://www.newsday.com/long-island/photos-of-the-day-1.50139710)
In a twist on the Broken Windows Theory, street artists are using their skills to combat urban blight in Baltimore with "The Slumlord Project". By drawing the attention of neighbors to abandoned and vacant properties and giving pertinent ownership information to take action on, 17 artists are spray painting and wheat-pasting in a D.I.Y.
Huff Post Latino Politics
The Huffington Post
While drug-related deaths continue to escalate as the Mexican drug war wages on, Mexican youth have resorted to peaceful and artistic forms of protest against the violence.
Last Sunday, activists met on Mexico City's Zocalo Square in an effort to demonstrate against the war. They covered the public space with chalk outlines of human bodies.
Marcel Duchamp, father of the readymade, forced the world to consider mundane things as significant objects, worthy of greater-than-average contemplation — yet his bicycle wheel, shovel, and urinal didn’t come freighted with all that much history.