On June 26, contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang released the daytime firework display ‘When the Sky Blooms with Sakura’ at Yotsukura Beach in Iwaki City, as commissioned by Saint Laurent’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello.
The face of Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam is falling apart: an eyeball has fallen out of its socket and the flesh of her left chin has been ripped off. Black-clad protesters in yellow hard hats are standing on top of her head, hanging a banner with ‘Hong Kong add oil’ on her forehead and shouting into her ear with a megaphone.
Architect Didier Faustino strips a billboard down to its skeleton, repurposes it as a swing set, and names it Double Happiness. This "urban reactivation device" needs to become a world wide phenomenon. Imagine billboard swing sets waiting at every destination. The climb looks worth the view.
Grangeon's long-running traveling exhibit, Pandas on Tour, features 1600 papier-mâché pandas. That's approximately one for as many as there are left in the world (recent estimates actually place the number slightly below that, at 1596).
Exhibition visitors have expressed feelings of uneasiness or even pain and nostalgia when seeing Colored Vases by Ai Weiwei1. The 51 vases that make up the artwork are originally treasures from the Neolithic Age (5000–3000 BCE) and the artist has dunked them in common industrial paint.
Why did Ai Weiwei do it?
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
The following description is taken from the website of Aljazeera America (find link below):
In early December, Ju Hyun-u, a student at South Korea’s elite Korea University, taped up two white sheets filled with his handwriting on a campus bulletin board. His message began with a question, “Are you doing all right?”.
On January 12, 2016, Shanghai's temperature dropped to its lowest of the year. A little girl was seen selling matches in the cold wind on Bund street. The little girl, wearing a classic dress, wrapped in an ocher-red scarf and carrying a small bamboo basket full of matches, gave matches to passers-by.
One of the most critical artists on the contemporary art scene is Zhang Huan. His works are of great social insight and unique in how he applies his artistic expression. He thus makes them an almost visual feast with a peek into the multilevel structure of modern society. One such work is the masterpiece "Family Tree," which shows how art can mould our social cognition through multilayered symbolism and profound imagery.
A Straight Journey is a documentary of Chinese homosexual people. It is the first time for Chinese gays and lesbians to make their debut and speak out via one of the largest Chinese Internet service providers. Two Chinese photographers Masa and Mojo took a journey across 11 China's cities making portraits of 48 gays, lesbians and their families from 2014-2015.
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Five Chinese feminists have been arrested for planning to protest against sexual harassment. They face five to ten years in jail. This post explains the background to the case, and suggests ways that other activists around the world can show solidarity.
Ladies’ Room, lasting fewer than six and a half minutes, offers a behind-the-scenes look at a women’s washroom in a nightclub located in a Beijing hotel. A male patron of Cui Xiuwen’s studio first took her there, and she acknowledges being drawn to the ladies’ room precisely because her host did not have access to it.
Sebastián Mahaluf stands out as an artist deeply engaged in weaving the complex threads of human connection, community, and the interplay of personal and collective experiences. His notable work, "CONTRADICTION AND TENSION," showcases his approach to art as a participatory experience that bridges individual perceptions with communal narratives.
Lu Yang attempts to bring the negative notion of Cancer cell into a “Kimo Kawa” object of love and/or pain and hopes to open a dialogue that brings awareness to the acceptance and tolerance of living with cancer cells.
The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, completed in 1968, is one of China’s most iconic infrastructural projects and a potent symbol of national pride. Spanning over 6,700 meters across the Yangtze River, it was the first double-decked road-rail truss bridge designed and built entirely by Chinese engineers, without foreign assistance, during a time of intense geopolitical isolation.
A minibus is parked on the side of the road with a series of pipelines wrapped around it. One end of the pipeline is connected to the exhaust port of the minibus, and the other end is put into the car, so that the exhaust gas can be directly introduced into the car, forming a " Street gas chamber".
In Shanghai, a vigil grew into a street protest where many held blank sheets of white paper in a symbol of tacit defiance.
In Beijing, students at Tsinghua University raised signs showing a math equation devised by the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, whose surname in Chinese is a homonym for “free man.”
WeiweiCam is a self-surveillance project by artist Ai Weiwei that went live on April 3, 2012, exactly one year after the artist's detention by Chinese officials at Beijing Airport.[1] At least fifteen surveillance cameras monitor his house in Beijing[2] which, according to Ai, makes it the most-watched spot of the city.[3] He described his decision to put himself under further surveillance as a symbolic way to increase transparency in the Chinese g
A viral video of a student dance performance in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has won praise for speaking out against so-called ghost marriages, which many today see as an archaic and even dangerous tradition.
A group of South Korean activists is determined to send copies of The Interview across the North Korean border, despite threats from the state to respond with “cannons or missiles” if the plan succeeds.
Simple Wedding Movie is an organization in China that cares about love and marriage and offer marriage service. It made a short video with the theme: experience getting old before getting married. Most people would get married in a young and beautiful age. During that time, they are young and beautiful. Because of that, young couple may more likely to have passion and love for each other.
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year fairs draw thousands of visitors who stroll past stalls of potted narcissus, snack on fish balls and snap up the latest plush toys. In recent years, the largest of the fairs, at Victoria Park, has also become a prime site for political expression.
Just the other day, we were hearing about Samsung getting in legal trouble over patent violations with Apple. A federal court decision ruled that Samsung owes Apple more than $1 billion in restitution.