From Black Power to Migrants’ Power
BY Robin Cembalest POSTED 01/22/13
As ’60s activist art enters museums, a new generation is creating an iconography of protest for today
On May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed approximately 90,000 people. Ai Weiwei created this serpentine sculpture, made of backpacks, to commemorate the more than 5,000 school children who were killed when their shoddily constructed schools collapsed.
On the Internet people only look at pictures of kittens.
British street artist Banksy has posted pictures and video of works made during a trip to the war-torn Gaza Strip.
One shows a figure reminiscent of Rodin’s “The Thinker” — though, set in a still-standing doorway surrounded by nothing but rubble, the figure seems more distraught than contemplative.
The prints exhibited June 2013 at Firestorm in Asheville NC, will comprise two separate bodies of work; Chelsea Ragan’s combination screen print / woodblock print / painting / drawings graphically detail police shootings of young black males from across the country, and Adam Void’s hand-painted screen prints state the facts of important national news stories that have been swept under the rug of mainstream corporate media.
#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!
TROY, N.Y. Three loud blasts from a steam whistle screamed out as the rain drizzled on the riverbank here. And the fleet of seven eclectic handmade ships slowly moved away.
Visual artist Alexandre Orion removes soot in an artful manner to produce skulls in the tunnels of the polluted city of Sao Paulo. Orion does so in an attempt to create intervention, raise awarenes, and decrease pollution. "From the ocular cavities of so many dead, his work looks out on the living and interrogates people passing by; it quietly criticizes our omission, our comfortable acceptance of pollution." ( Jose De Souza Martins)
The Joseph A. Labadie Collection contains posters which have been acquired over the past 100 years. This database consists of images of those posters covering social protest movements such as Anarchism, Civil Liberties, Colonialism, Communism, Ecology, Labor, Pacifism, Sexual Freedom, Socialism, Women, and Youth/Student Protest. Some are from the first half of the 20th century, but the majority are from the 1960s and later. Many are undated.
Mary Fisher wears many hats: Artist, author, and HIV/AIDS activist are just a few. The latter is perhaps what she's known best for—her influential speech at the 1992 Republication National Convention is regarded as one of the greatest American speeches of the century, spurring a push toward treatment and compassion towards those who are HIV-positive.
The graffiti made up of 24 stenciled Chinese characters sprayed in red paint against a white backdrop across walls appeared in East London’s street art haven Brick Lane on August 5, 2023. It was created a group of young people from mainland China, including several art students at London’s Royal College of Art.
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.”
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
Chinese Artist Zhang Bingjian has embarked on an artistic project to promote transparency in China and Chinese government. His motivation? Discovering the extent of the corruption going on in his country. Zhang told the Toronto Star: “The chief prosecutor announced that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in a single year. I remember being shocked, a little angry and then confused.”
The first solo exhibition in a New York museum by the globally renowned contemporary artist El Anatsui, this show will feature over 30 works in metal and wood that transform appropriated objects into site-specific sculptures.
Julie Dillon is a critically acclaimed illustrator, having been nominated and won multiple awards, including two Hugos and a Chesley. Her work often deals with science fiction and fantasy stories, and her work in the field has made her aware of the lack of diversity in this optimistic speculative fiction.
Debuting at Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, July 14 – September 30 for FRONTart 2018 is ‘The American Library’ by Yinka Shonibare MBE, a celebration of the diversity of the American population. It aims to be an instigator of discovery and debate. The thousands of books in this art installation are covered in the artist’s signature Dutch wax printed cotton textile.
Following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, corporations jumped on the opportunity to commodify the Black Lives Matter movement. In June of 2020, Netflix launched a Black Lives Matter collection, and by December, they had released Cops and Robbers, an animated short about racial injustice.
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.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Dana Schutz, the acclaimed New York artist who trained at the Cleveland Institute of Art, famously stirred controversy at the 2017 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art with “Open Casket,’’ her painting depicting Emmett Till’s body in its coffin.
Till, a black 14-year-old, was murdered and mutilated by white men in Mississippi in 1955 after having been falsely accused of flirting with a white woman.