In late January 2009, a group of 40 members of right-wing Hindu group Sri Ram Sena attacked women and men in a pub in the Indian city of Mangalore. They were upset with the women for engaging in behavior they found immoral, claiming that the girls were disrepecting traditional Indian values. Video footage of the event spread across Youtube in India, sparking outrage among many at the attack on innocent women.
A new, three-minute ad by Coca-Cola, "Small World Machines," starts with a relatively straightforward premise: India and Pakistan do not get along so well. It ends with the promise of peace: "Togetherness, humanity, this is what we all want, more and more exchange," a woman, either Indian or Pakistani, narrates as the music swells. Sounds great. How do we get there? By buying Coke, of course.
Seeking to use war-time waste for social good, Saught was set up by Pamela Yeo, Adeline Heng and Ng Sook Zhen in December 2010. Based in Singapore, the company uses the metal from de-activated landmines to create pieces of jewellery. The organisation employs citizens from conflict-ravaged regions, offering a source of employment for those who may have lost as a result of the fighting in their nation.
With World Comics India, the organization he started, Sharad has pioneered a cheap and easy medium for poor people to communicate meaningfully on issues that are neglected by the conventional media. While the urban elite dominates public media, the grinding day-to-day concerns of millions are rarely heard. Layers of discrimination and abuse heaped on huge numbers of people keep their problems out of sight and out of mind.
Many artists are inspired to bring climate change into their work after a direct experience with it. Catherine Sarah Young hopes her work helps people understand and talk about their experiences with climate change.
For FX Harsono, art is activism. Over the past four decades, performance, sculpture, and painting have become his means of nonviolent protest against government autocracy and ethnic strife in Indonesia.
"Thousands of people, some wearing funeral shrouds, staged demonstrations at the site of the Rana Plaza factory complex on Thursday on the one-year anniversary of the Bangladesh disaster that claimed 1,138 lives.
Zubair Magray, who goes by the stage name Haze Kay, raps about the conflict in Indian-administered Kashmir. The 23-year-old, one of the first rappers to emerge from the valley, blames the Indian military for "ruining" his homeland.
Myanmar has been engulfed in protest since February 1, when Burmese army general Min Aung Hlaing seized control of the government in a military coup, refusing to accept the landslide election victory of the National League for Democracy and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
A new comic book with a female rape survivor as its "super hero" has been launched to focus attention on the problem of sexual violence in India.
Priya's Shakti, inspired by Hindu mythological tales, tells the story of Priya, a young woman and gang-rape survivor, and Goddess Parvati as they fight against gender crimes in India.
In her peppy and helpful online video tutorial, Reshma Bano Quereshi promises to teach her viewers “how to get perfect red lips.”
But unlike the more than 200,000 other online videos dedicated to the application of lipstick, this one goes beyond plumping and priming.
Meet To Sleep, a campaign started by Blank Noise, asks citizens from all across India to come to different public spaces like parks, and sleep there in order to take back free spaces without being afraid for their safety. The first meet was organised in November, 2014, in Bengaluru’s Cubbon Park. And since then there have been eleven meets across various cities including Jaipur, Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.
The Kiss of Love campaign in India is a non violent protest against moral policing. It started out as a Facebook page but gained momentum across India when a mob of conservative, right-wing party members attacked and demolished a coffee shop in Kozhikode, Kerala. Their grounds to do so was public display of affection by couples inside the coffee shop, which they saw as immoral activity.
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.
To call attention to bullying, the Singapore Coalition Against Bullying for Children and Youth has released a video that gets shorter each time it is viewed.
Hosted on a site called Share It To The End, the short animated video depicts a boy getting bullied at school and telling us he always feels alone and doesn’t feel safe anywhere.
India Ink [Blog]
The New York Times Global Edition
April 4, 2012
By Neha Thirani
The women of Gurgaon, angered by the recent incidents of violent crimes against women in the outsourcing boom town, are calling for a “Girlcott.”
As climate change worsens, so will our collective sense of loss. Coastlines, cities, crops, and entire species will disappear. Artist Catherine Young has created a perfume line that bottles up the scents of things we enjoy today, but will be diminished–or gone–soon enough. During exhibitions, visitors are allowed to smell the perfumes.
“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.
Singaporean artist Lee Wen’s series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992–2012), one of his most famous and long-standing performances, was not simply a personal affront, it was a political affront. At the intersection of Asian art history, critical race theory, and migration and diasporic studies, one is never far (enough away) from the chromatic framing of race and ethnicity: yellow race, yellow peril, yellow face, the forever foreigner.
Dogs featured in one ruse to ridicule the regime—pictures of dictator Than Shwe were hung around the necks of the stray dogs that roam the streets of Rangoon. The pictures, which rapidly found their way onto the Internet, are the work of an exiled Burmese satirist who goes by the name of Mr Creator. Downloaded copies of his pictures and cartoons are popular items among cyber dissidents.
Delhi- based graffiti artist who goes by the name Daku went around South Delhi, one of the poshest places in the city, and painted on overflowing garbage cans.