Projects tagged "Africa"

UCT Students Strip Down to Highlight Concerns Over Rape Culture
Practitioner:
UTC Students
Date:
May 10 2016
Students have accused university management of having a lack of concern about the issue. CAPE TOWN – University of Cape Town (UCT) students have stripped to their underwear to highlight their concerns over rape culture on campus. Dozens of students have gathered outside the Bremner Building to discuss sexual assault and sexual harassment at the university.
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Performance Obscura
Practitioner:
Ruth Simbao
Date:
Sep 1 2014
In her curatorial project Making Way, Ruth Simbao brought together works that complicated the idea of globalization’s effect on African nations, especially the idea that the new phase would usher in an almost frictionless movement of labor and capital across borders. Works by artists like Athi-Patra Ruga reflected on questions of how bodies moved through settler colonialist spaces.
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ECO Fashionable Collectibles- Made From Recycled Plastic
Practitioner:
Adeyemi Emmanuel
Date:
Nov 11 2019
In 2019, Adeyemi Emmanuel began collecting bits of discarded plastic and used them to make a backpack. Seeing a way to raise environmental awareness in fashion-conscious Nigeria, Emmanuel in November launched a line of bags, wallets and gift boxes made of 20% leather and around 80% plastic waste, called ECO. He collects chips of used plastic by hand, such as leftovers from picture frames, primarily from craft workshops.
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Water Life
Practitioner:
Aïda Muluneh
Date:
Jan 1 2018
“Most people can’t imagine a futurist Africa,” says Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh. She challenges this in her project, Water Life, exploring real-world issues with an otherworldly twist. Muluneh went to Dallol, Afar, Ethiopia, an extreme landscape where it is dry and hot to capture the essence of water to life. Through her work, Muluneh highlights how water scarcity is mainly a burden on women.
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Is He A Real Man? The “Vrai Djo” SFCG Project
Practitioner:
SFCG
Date:
Sep 1 2011
In the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC, sexual violence is a community-wide problem. Rape, in the DRC has been used as a weapon of war and sadly continues to increase even after. According to the peacebuilding NGO Search for Common Ground or SFCG, it is estimated that there are over 400,000 surviving rape victims living in the DRC today. In this environment violence against women has become normative behavior.
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Rhodes Must Fall
Practitioner:
UCT Students
Date:
Mar 6 2015
This series of protests began on the UCT campus in an effort to remove the bronze statute of Cecil Rhodes in the center of campus due to the belief that Rhodes represents the oppressive colonization of South Africa that eventually led to apartheid.
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Somalia guerrilla artists dare to paint reality
Practitioner:
Muhiyidin Sharif Ibrahim
Date:
Mar 5 2013
“I want to show the people how bad the troubles were," says artist Muhiyidin Sharif Ibrahim of Mogadishu, Somalia. "That’s the message we’re going to send to people.” (Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times)
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Self Portraits of Zanele Muholi
Practitioner:
Zanele Muholi
Date:
Jul 25 2022
Zanele Muholi, the self-proclaimed visual activist and photographer, investigates the fraught relationship between post-apartheid South Africa and its queer community, who, despite being constitutionally protected since 1996, remain a constant target of abuse and discrimination.
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Nats Never Die/The Zombies are Coming!
Practitioner:
The Yes Men and Reclaim the City
Date:
Sep 30 2019
The Yes Men join Reclaim the City in their fight against unjust housing policy. On September 30, 2019, a horde of zombies attended a "#natsneverdie rally" at the Cape Town Civic Centre in order to celebrate Mayor Dan Plato and the Mayoral Committee and to support their policies, which are increasingly similar to those of the National Party under Apartheid.
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"Jesus Was The First To Decriminalize Sex Work"
Practitioner:
Asijiki Coalition for the Decriminalisation of Sex Work
Date:
Mar 1 2017
A big yellow banner hangs off the Central Methodist Church in Cape Town, South Africa proclaiming that *"Jesus was the first to decriminalise sex work - John 8:7"*
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As the statue falls, she rises in protest
Practitioner:
Sethembile Msezane
Date:
Apr 9 2015
I was born in the 90s, but I’m not a Born Free; it was before South Africa became a democracy. Many believe that my generation doesn’t have anything to protest against. Given that police threw stun grenades at a student protest outside parliament last month, that is far from the truth.
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Org Brings Women Menstrual Products & Education To Global Level
Practitioner:
Days for Girls International
Date:
Feb 1 2020
Although we are in the supposedly modern and advanced year of 2020, there are still at least 500 million women and girls that lack adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene management, according to the World Bank Organization.
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Labs Creates Sustainable Music Studios in Unlikely Places
Practitioner:
Beat Making Lab
Date:
Mar 13 2013
It started as an experiment: what happens when you equip a vibrant youth community with the resources to express themselves through hip hop and electronic music? Last summer I traveled to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo to find out and the results were more beautiful than I could have imagined.
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"Hail to the Thief" : political art or creative activism?
Practitioner:
The Goodman Gallery
Date:
May 20 2012
Established Cape Town based artist Brett Murray returns to Goodman Gallery Johannesburg with Hail to the Thief II. This body of satirical work continues his acerbic attacks on abuses of power, corruption and political dumbness seen in his 2010 Cape Town show Hail to the Thief.
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Women are Heroes Project
Practitioner:
JR
Date:
Jan 1 2008
In Women Are Heroes, JR introduces women who sometimes look death in the face, who go from laughter to tears, who are generous, have nothing and yet share, who have had a painful past and long to build a happy future.
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Sex at the Specs
Practitioner:
School for Creative Activism
Date:
Apr 2 2015
The “Perceiving Freedom” glasses sculpture on Cape Town’s Sea Point promenade looking towards Robben Island, commemorates late President Nelson Mandela and the values of freedom and equality.
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#ANOTHERLIGHTUP
Practitioner:
Faith47, Design Indaba Trust, Thinking
Date:
Feb 25 2014
In Cape Town, South Africa the design firms Design Indaba Trust and Thinking have teamed up with artist Faith47 to help raise funds to bring more light to their urban city. Their goal is to raise funds to light up 700 meters of Manwabisi Park, which will ultimately reduce the crime rate in the area through more light. In order to get the community involved in the project, they have combined street art with community engagement.
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Once banned for his work, anti-apartheid activist highlights role of politics in art
Practitioner:
Gavin Jantjes
Date:
Jun 19 2024
In 1978, while studying print-making in Hamburg, Gavin Jantjes was deemed a persona non grata by South Africa. His crime? Creating a series of prints that documented the violence and discrimination in the apartheid state, which he gathered together under the tongue-in-cheek name of a "colouring book".
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SUNO-ethical fashion
Practitioner:
Suno
Date:
Apr 8 2008
SUNO is one of the few luxury fashion brands that has been born out of a social cause. Max Osterweis and designer Erin Beatty launched their first collection in the spring of 2009, " after post-election violence threatened to damage the economy and industry in Kenya." While the clothes is mostly produced by local artisans in Kenya, Suno has since expanded its business to include production in Peru, India, and NY.
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KAGOGOS (child soldier in Central Africa)
Practitioner:
Uganda National Contemporary Ballet
Date:
Oct 9 2013
The Uganda National Contemporary Ballet (UNCB) presented a new powerful and moving production advocating for the child soldiers all over the world at the National Theatre in Kampala.
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Congo Man Sets Himself Ablaze for Peace
Practitioner:
Unidentified Man
Date:
Nov 8 2023
A video that was first posted on X (formerly Twitter) on November 8, of a Congolese man setting himself on fire has gone viral. The gruesome clip has started a discussion on whether a genocide is occurring in the DRC and is being ignored by both Africa and the rest of the world.
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Ghana Wins Election 2016
Practitioner:
Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Rebecca Ekpe etc.
Date:
Dec 1 2016
An exercise that used drama/and audio visuals to engage with with all election partners, especially the political parties especially the political parties and their candidates/leaders, Electoral Commission, Musicians Association of Ghana, etc to push for a free, fair and peaceful Presidential and Parliamentary election and hand over of power to who ever won the elections peacefully.
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Maboneng Township Arts Experience
Practitioner:
Palesa & Siphiwe Ngwenya
Date:
Jan 1 2001
At the age of just 30, Palesa Ngwenya is helping transform these areas through her position as development coordinator of Maboneng Township Arts Experience. “We turn homes in the townships into art galleries,” says the young South African woman, who grew up during apartheid. “It’s about showing people that you can use what you have to do things that can change your life."
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Raising Awareness of Migration and COVID 19 through Graffiti and Street Art in Accra
Practitioner:
Ghana Graffiti Collective, Accra Metropolitan Assembly
Date:
May 29 2020
In a bid to fight the spread of COVID-19, the EU Delegation to Ghana on Wednesday 27 May joined the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and artists from the Ghana Graffiti Collective, to launch an initiative to use street art and graffiti to create awareness about coronavirus and migration. The artwork created by the Ghana Graffiti collective speak about hope, tolerance, love and solidarity.
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El Anatsui’s Artistic Practice
Practitioner:
El Anatsui
Date:
Jan 1 2020
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.
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