Installed on the occasion of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, I want a president renders a poignant portrait of the cultural and political climate in the early 1990s in New York City with words that still resonate today.
Sima Qian: China's 'grand historian' By Carrie Gracie BBC News, Beijing
Speaking truth to power has always been a high-risk strategy in China. Its rulers tend to prefer flattery, and writers who forget this do so at their peril. China's "grand historian" - 2,000 years ago - was one of many who have paid a terrible price.
On an unnamed part of the internet, young adult author Gwen C. Katz found a delightfully deluded male author claiming that his facility with writing natural women characters constituted an unassailable rebuke to the idea that we need diverse authors to write diverse viewpoints. If a male author can write a woman this convincing, surely there’s no need for the #OwnVoices movement!
While meditating in front of a Nepalese Sarasvati statue on New Year's Day in 1991 at her California home, Mayumi received a calling that brought a sudden halt to painting. Having witnessed the horrors of atomic bombings as a child and later, watching her beloved Japan become a leader in nuclear-energy, and seeing the effects of depleted uranium, Mayumi had to pursue a global cause greater than her art or feminism.
Dr. Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan medical anthropologist, activist, and writer, was convicted after writing and posting a poem online, in which she criticized Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his mother. In November 2018, Ugandan authorities charged Dr. Nyanzi with “cyber harassment” and “offensive communication” under Sections 24 and 25 of the 2011 Computer Misuse Act, and detained her in connection with the poem.
It can be important to reflect on the artistic recounts of activists experiences under state imprisonment. In a revealing interview with Artspace, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei reflects on his 81-day secret detention in 2011 and the psychological strategies used to dismantle identity and autonomy.
I get catcalled on the street by a construction worker. He says that he can see I’m smart because I have enormous books. He tells me he’s reading the latest Zadie Smith novel. I invite him to join my book club, and spend all night fantasizing about his insightful commentary around non-linear plot structure.
Gao Yaojie (Chinese: 高耀潔, Gao Yaojie; 19 December 1927 – 10 December 2023) was a Chinese gynecologist, academic, and AIDS activist based in Zhengzhou, Henan, China. Gao was honoured for her work by the United Nations and Western organizations whilst spending time under house arrest.
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.
The Creativity Movement (formerly known as the World Church of the Creater) is a self proclaimed white supremacist organization with factions across the United States. In 2004, a high ranking leader of the Montana based faction defected from the group, but not before donating over 4,000 of the group's bibles called the 'RAHOWA' (acronym for racial holy war) to the Montana Human Rights Network.
In Citizen, Claudia Rankine recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV—everywhere, all the time.
On the morning of April 24th, 2014, members of NYU's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine signed into several NYU dorms and slipped eviction notices under all of the doors. The eviction notices were written to raise awareness about the eviction of Palestinians from their homes by the Israeli government and stated very clearly at the bottom of the page that they were not real.
Concept
1. This is a participatory art action initiated by Action Office, aiming at questioning current democratic elections in Singapore and shaping an alternative possibility.
2. Design the pocards to resemble ballots, inviting people to fill out election results and mail them to the corresponding country’s polling stations or current government.
The beacon flashed incessantly. On. Off. On again.
Like some sort of traffic light gone crazy, it pierced the thick nighttime mist hovering over San Francisco Bay. The light sent a message five miles across the dark waters from Ghirardelli Square to Alcatraz Island. There, cheers erupted as the light flashed the words, "Go Indians!"
Between the World and Me
by Richard Wright
And one morning while in the woods I stumbled
suddenly upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly
oaks and elms
And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting
themselves between the world and me....
This special EDition is a revolutionary chant against the menacing cantankerous demonic , satanic COVID 19. And again doubles as a bold and poetic supplication to the great Almighty God to release us off this pandemic bondage. This Edition is a poetically driven spiritual prayer for freedom of expression and freedom after expression.
If, like me, you spent the days after Trump’s election in a depressed stupor wondering what – if anything – would change, look no further than Good Trouble. Set up by former Dazed editor Rod Stanley, it’s a new collective arts platform dedicated to celebrating the culture of resistance and grassroots activists promoting positive change.
The N.R.A. Reimagines Classic Fairy Tales, With Guns.
The world of make-believe can be a scary place, but never fear: Thanks to a series of reimagined fairy tales published online by the National Rifle Association, classic characters like Hansel and Gretel are now packing heat.
On March 24, 1992, a fake inter-office memorandum from the then Mayor of the City of New York, David Dinkins, was leaked to the press. A handwritten Post-it note was attached which read "Thought you might be interested in seeing what the Mayor's up to! 'Mayor to Sell the Brooklyn Bridge!' Think this will fly?? I love New York!!!"
A widespread but illegal campaign by a group calling itself “the Gluers” uses posters to denounce violence against women. It has become an effective — and ubiquitous — tool to raise awareness.
On a recent mild night, a squad of four young women wandered through a peaceful neighborhood in eastern Paris, armed with a bucket of glue, a paintbrush and backpacks loaded with posters.
American Born Chinese is a graphic novel published in 2006 by the American author and illustrator Gene Luen Yang. Through three interweaving stories that span from the 16th century to the present, the novel explores issues of Chinese American identity, anti-Asian racism, and assimilation. American Born Chinese is the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award.
There is no embassy of Iran in Jerusalem.
We ask why.
We are a group of artists living and creating in Jerusalem, trying to create a new reality. one which we can identify with. A reality of dialogue between the people, not dominated by mass media and governments.
The Embassy as we imagine it will be functioning as a bridge for trading ideas, dreams and giving silent voices a sound through art.