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.
Greg Jobin-Leeds, a long-time social activist, collaborated with AgitArte, a collective of artists and organizers, to capture the stories of today’s social movements and the activists behind their success with the release of When We Fight, We Win: Twenty-First-Century Social Movements and the Activists That Are Transforming Our World.
Without having been commissioned—or even given legal permission at all—Haring set out to create Crack Is Wack on the wall of an abandoned handball court in a park at 2nd Avenue and East 128th Street on June 27, 1986. Upon the completion of the mural, Haring was arrested by the New York City Police Department for vandalism of city property and faced potential jail time in addition to heavy fines.
By Joe Laur
Members of the creative collective Neozoon, a group of artists based in Paris and Berlin, are staging a protest against using animal furs as fashion by turning fur coats into street art graffiti.
Apparently, they are taking furs and fur garments and reshaping them into animals in action on streets, along alleyways, against walls and even on trees in parks.
The Neistat Brothers first attracted public attention in 2003 with their blatantly critical work, iPod’s Dirty Secret. After being refused a replacement battery for an 18-month old iPod, [they] took to the streets of Manhattan on their bikes to sabotage iPod’s omnipresent advertising.
#thisisnotamask
Covid-19 Pandemic Rubber Stamp Currency Intervention
Website: https://thisisnotamask.tumblr.com/
For more information:
Joseph DeLappe artist/activist – j.delappe@abertay.ac.uk
Brent Richardson media artist – brent@BrentRich.com
Let’s mask the presidents!
Creative Graffiti at the Urban Culture Festival in Germany
By Loredana Loy
A street art project by by KD Key Detail from Minsk, Belarus--created and featured at the IBUg 2013 Urban Culture Festival in Zwickau, Germany.
The project is entitled "Bon Appetit." Images speak louder than words. Links and photos below.
The Insurrection-Resurrection Service Circus is this summer’s [started in 2020 and is ongoing] contribution to the iconic Bread and Puppet Circus tradition beloved by audiences worldwide for nearly 2 generations — a bright, raucous melee of short acts governed by a brass band, addressing the heart of the current moment using diverse puppetry styles and spanning many moods, from slapstick to the sublime.
The user muchachafanzine on instagram is an activist who writes a "decolonial native xicana feminist fanzine". They are an online activist and they spread their message through their page, the zine, and through merchandise. Daisy Salinas began Muchacha Fanzine as a feminist punk zine in 2011. Over the years, Muchacha has grown into a larger, submission-based compilation of work by marginalized voices from around the world.
The Red Sand Project is a participatory art installation and social awareness project created by artist and activist Molly Gochman in 2014. The project aims to raise awareness about human trafficking, which is a global issue that affects an estimated 40 million people, including men, women, and children who are subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and other forms of exploitation.
The new exhibit “MESH” at Portland Art Museum features Indigenous contemporary artists advocating for change
Visual artist, writer and activist Ka’ila Farrell-Smith says she considers herself a wartime artist.
She is a member of the Klamath tribes and lives in Modoc Point, Oregon. When asked about how history influences her work, the answer weaves through over 150 years of white colonization and Indigenous struggles in the West:
Add Colour (Refugee Boat) begins as an all-white boat in an all-white room. Ono’s instruction for this collective, participatory work reads: ‘Just blue like the ocean.’ You are invited to contribute your hopes and beliefs in blue and white.
Play Safe is a documentary film series created and directed by NYU alum Eddie Einbinder. The film, much of which now appears for free on YouTube, was originally released in 2013 after being filmed between 2011 and 2012. It debuted at the International Harm Reduction conference in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2013.
Brian Larney is an AI.tivist or American Indian artist. He is also an Artivist where he performs Artivism, a concept that includes art as a form of activism.
A collective endeavor of Greek antiquity — no less than eighty different artists worked on the frieze alone — the Parthenon was built between 447 BC and 438 BC under the orders of Pericles, following a democratic debate, and overseen by the sculptor Phidias. It measures ten meters high and approximately seventy meters long by thirty meters wide.
Charged with participating in demonstrations against the Islamic Republic of Iran, Soudabeh Ardavan was held for eight years (1981-1989) in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. She found sanity and solace through the forbidden activities of drawing and painting, secretly producing paint from flower petals and tea, using brushes made from toothpicks and human hair.
CAM brings contemporary art and ideas directly to Saint Louis Public High School and Middle School students through its ArtReach program. Tailored to meet the needs of individual schools and teachers, ArtReach is designed to raise awareness of contemporary issues through an exploration of contemporary art. The program includes a curriculum-based offering of museum tours, school visits, and creative workshops for students and teachers alike.
"Featuring giant ocean dice that originally appeared in the booklet "drift" by Max Mulhern, these dice were launched in international waters to create a visually stunning ode to chance and luck. This project can also be found under the title: "the greatest floating craps game on earth"." --AquaDice website
Mounica Tata launched Doodleodrama as an online journal to improve representation for her body type in mainstream media. “I’ve always been an overweight person and bullied and shamed for the same. Only fairly recently I’ve learned to make my peace with my body. My own journey with my body inspired/continues to inspire me to talk about it.”
“OUTRAGE: Artists Respond
to the Election of Donald Trump” an online exhibition of art work by 20 artists
https://sites.google.com/site/outrageartistsrespondtotrump/
Art Hazelwood, Aileen Bassis, Patricia Dahlman, Donna Coleman, Anne Dushanko Dobek,
There are few artists more innocuous, more neutered, more universally loved and reviled than Thomas Kinkade. His soft-focus images present an idyllic vision of America and of Christianity, like Norman Rockwell without the blue-collar populism, where everything is beautiful, nothing hurts, and there’s always a warm fire going in the Lincoln-Log cabin just down the trail.
The Mirror Casket project is a sculpture, performance, and visual call to action designed and orchestrated by a collaborative of St. Louis community artists in response to the shooting death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, MO.
The Vivienne Foundation exists to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Vivienne's creativity and activism.
Since the start of her career in the 1970s, Vivienne was renowned not only for her fashion design, but also her activism. Vivienne always utilised her platform of prestige to make the world a better place.