Projects tagged "North America"

Naming the Lost Memorials
Practitioner:
Naming the Lost, Make the Road, CityLore, Great Small Works, Fund Excluded Workers coalition, artists around the country, folklorists around the country
Date:
May 25 2020
In May 2020, a team of artists, activists, folklorists, and people who lost loved ones to Covid-19 came together to make monthly memorial sites in New York City to remember victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. They continued installing memorials around New York City every month during the summer of 2020.
Benjamin Lay spills blood at 1738 Quaker Meeting
Practitioner:
Benjamin Lay
Date:
Sep 1 1738
It was September 1738, and Benjamin Lay had walked 20 miles, subsisting on “acorns and peaches,” to reach the Quakers’ Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Beneath his overcoat he wore a military uniform and a sword — both anathema to Quaker teachings. He also carried a hollowed-out book with a secret compartment, into which he had tucked a tied-off animal bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice.
Cob Houses, Kitchens, Showers for Homeless People
Practitioner:
Artists Building Communities, Essential Food and Medicine, and Living Earth Structures
Date:
May 1 2021
Members of three organizations – Artists Building Communities, Essential Food and Medicine, and Living Earth Structures – have built a kitchen, clinic, free store, stage, toilet, oven, and shower with and for a homeless community near Wood Street in West Oakland.
Call for Local Artwork Exhibition
Practitioner:
Maximo Caminero
Date:
Feb 18 2014
MIAMI — Officials at the recently inaugurated Pérez Art Museum Miami confirmed on Monday that a valuable vase by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei had been deliberately destroyed by a visitor in what appeared to be an act of protest.
Healing through sound and community art
Practitioner:
Guadalupe Maravilla
Date:
Feb 25 2025
Glowing softly in the West Texas desert night, artist Guadalupe Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, was once an ordinary school bus but is now a richly decorated, mobile site for remembrance and healing. Like much of the artist’s work, this piece commemorates and confronts the artist’s journey to the United States as an unaccompanied, undocumented minor fleeing civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.
The Balloon Project by Yan Kong
Practitioner:
Asian American Women Artists Alliance
Date:
Oct 10 2019
The Balloon Project, is a three-year-in-the-making Art Installation by Yan Kong in support of world refugees and migrants. It pays tribute to human spirit, courage and survival. The Balloon Project is a multimedia work incorporating mechanical engineering and visuals to fuse art and politics. 32 balloons inflate and deflate to simulate refugee and migrants' breathing while fleeing their countries to seek safety and freedom in the world.
Al Kufiyyeh 3arabeyyeh (The Kufiyeh is Arab)
Practitioner:
Shadia Mansour
Date:
Sep 1 2011
Mansour began rapping in 2003 and has gained recognition in the Middle East, Europe and the United States for her own songs and collaborations with other artists. She performs wearing a traditional Palestinian thawb and has said that she considers herself to be part of a "musical intifada" against the occupation of Palestine, conservatism and oppression of women.
The Dark Side: O'Keefe
Practitioner:
James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles
Date:
Sep 3 2009
Trickery and disguise, usually followed by revealing the truth, are often tactics used by liberal activism, like the Yes Men for example. When used by the right, however, it can have different implications. Pretending to be a CEO or billionaire in order to expose corporate greed and corruption is clearly different then pretending to be a minority. The use of disguise can manipulate and shed light on hierarchies of power.
Environmental group to carve Donald Trump’s face into the side of Arctic iceberg
Practitioner:
Melting Ice
Date:
Dec 1 2018
The stunt aims to show the impact of climate change by live streaming the sculpture melting. A climate change group is raising half a million dollars with the goal of carving President Donald Trump’s face into an arctic iceberg. The Finnish group Melting Ice is spearheading the initiative with the intention of carving a 115-foot ice sculpture of Mr Trump’s face, and have dubbed the effort “Project Trumpmore”.
Now Watch This
Practitioner:
Surveillance Camera Players (SCP)
Date:
Nov 1 1996
The Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) is a small, informal group of people who are unconditionally opposed to the installation and use of video surveillance cameras in public places.
Badass Indian Pinups
Practitioner:
Nimisha Bhanot
Date:
Apr 13 2013
“Badass Indian Pinups” is a series of paintings by Indo-Canadian artist Nimisha Bhanot, that features paintings of Indian women being confident and sexually liberated.
The Drone Project - A Participatory Memorial
Practitioner:
Joseph DeLappe
Date:
Apr 6 2014
Media artist Joseph DeLappe announces the completion of “The Drone Project: A Participatory Memorial” on the campus of Fresno State University in California.
Rat Row
Practitioner:
Laborers Local 79
Date:
Jan 7 2025
A fat cat, a pig wearing a top hat and five rats. All seven inflatables faced the 34th Street entrance of the Empire State Building last Thursday, two weeks into a protest by members of Laborers Local 79 who rallied, hundreds strong, in the afternoon shadow of the props.
Untitled
Practitioner:
Hans Haacke
Date:
Mar 11 2002
Marking the six month anniversary of September 11th, a poster designed by artist Hans Haacke appeared on scaffolding and media walls throughout New York City. The poster itself was blank and white, consisting only of die-cut silhouettes of the World Trade Center towers. The posters effectively reminded the pubic that September 11th created a ubiquitous filter through which everyday realities have become measured or seen.
A Haunting Artistic Tribute to Garment Workers Killed in Bangladesh and the US
Practitioner:
Artist Rachel Breen, Poet Alison Morse
Date:
Apr 1 2018
NORTHFIELD, Minn. — Exactly 1,281 white garments hang from the ceiling of the Perlman Teaching Museum’s Braucher Gallery. The collared shirts, knit sweaters, tights, and other items of clothing glow with an eerie luminosity.
The Artists Representing Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria
Practitioner:
Focus on Puerto Rico residency
Date:
Jan 18 2018
Six months before Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, a group of Puerto Rican artists were invited to participate in a residency program in Miami by local art organizations. The artists were offered abandoned storefronts-turned-studios at a historic downtown mall, where they’d exhibit their work during Miami Art Week in December to engage an art world that often overlooks the island territory.
The Grim Reapers
Practitioner:
Get Money Out of Politics, Backbone Campaign
Date:
Jan 14 2013
The Grim Reapers stood outside the capital building of the State of Washington as the new Governor Jay Inslee was being inaugurated. We were part of a climate change rally that lasted several hours and included many other groups protesting coal trains and fracking for oil and gas. The same groups also participated in the Seattle action on February 17,2013 when they had a bullet train for people instead of a coal train.
Polylogues
Practitioner:
Xandra Clark
Date:
Nov 1 2018
Journalist and playwright Xandra Clark began creating Polylogues, a one woman show exploring non-monogamy, in 2017. The show is created from interviews Clark conducts around the world with people of different ages, genders, and races about their relationship with non-monogamy or polyamory (hence the name of the performance Polylogues).
Partnership Exhibition with the Banneker-Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture
Practitioner:
Maryland Hall
Date:
Feb 27 2021
Maryland Hall, in partnership with the Banneker Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, invited Maryland-based Black artists, whose work encapsulates activism and social justice and using the creative process to educate their audiences about diversity, equity and inclusion to send proposals to take one of six 5 ft.
R-Evolution
Practitioner:
Marco Cochrane and Julia Whitelaw
Date:
Nov 10 2017
Activists are working to bring a steel sculpture of a 45-foot-tall nude woman to Washington, where she will temporarily face the White House from a perch on the National Mall. Transporting the sculpture from its home in San Francisco will be an undertaking, but its artist, Marco Cochrane, said he saw it as an opportunity to start a conversation about violence against women.
Subversive Coloring Books
Practitioner:
various
Date:
Jan 1 1961
While adult coloring books are hitting a high note right now in 2016, this isn't the first time this has happened. Back in the 1960s, coloring books were so popular that one of them even made it to the New York Times bestseller list. However, while modern adult coloring books are very geometric and abstract, intended to help adults destress and relax, adult coloring books from the 1960s were much more political.
A Story Like Mine
Practitioner:
Halsey
Date:
Jan 20 2018
Halsey Delivers Emotional Speech About Sexual Abuse, Rape at New York Women’s March: Here Is Her Full Poem Halsey penned a powerful, heart-wrenching poem about her own experiences with sexual assault and rape for the 2018 Women's March in New York City. Watch and read it here. By Ashley Iasimone 01/20/2018
A is for Activist: An ABC Book for Kids of the 99%
Practitioner:
Innosanto Nagara
Date:
Nov 5 2012
A is for Activism is a children's book developed by Innosanto Nagara, an author illustrator and founding member of the Design Action Collective, a worker owned cooperative design studio in Oakland that is dedicated to “serving the Movement.” The book includes playful rhymes for each letter stressing the importance of civic engagement and a participatory democracy.
Gerrymander 5K run and walk
Practitioner:
J.P. & Cinnamon Kennedy
Date:
Nov 4 2017
Runners and walkers planning to take part in a 5K race in Asheville early next month might do better with a compass — a well-tuned political compass, that is.
Celebrate,Remember, Fight Back
Practitioner:
American Cancer Society
Date:
For more than 100 years, the American Cancer Society has worked relentlessly to help people stay well, help people get well, find cures and fight back against cancer.In May 1985, Dr.

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