MoMA presents the first comprehensive American survey of the leading contemporary artist Walid Raad (b. 1967, Lebanon), featuring his work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance from the last 25 years.
An early representation of Nara’s strong stance against nuclear weapons, No Nukes is now synonymous with the antinuclear protest movement. The work is painted over a promotional poster for bossa nova musician Vinicius Cantuária’s Amor Brasileiro (1998) among other printed ephemera.
On Friday night, a painting by the anonymous street artist known as Banksy sold at Sotheby’s auction house in London for $1.4 million. But as soon as the auctioneer dropped the gavel, something unexpected happened: a beeping alarm went off and the frame began eating the painting, spitting half of it out the bottom in what may be the first instance of a self-destructing painting, reports Scott Reyburn at The New York Times.
Mass media using propaganda to brainwash citizens. Confusion and ignorance causing a divide. People rising up against an oppressive government. Humans being torn between rage and love. These are the themes of Green Day’s widely successful 2004 album, “American Idiot.” These themes still sound familiar. Nearly two decades later, the world, especially the United States, faces these same issues.
In its thirteenth year, the annual Miss Talavera Bruce beauty pageant is held in unlikely surroundings: a women’s prison in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Instituto Penal Talavera is the only maximum-security women’s prison in the city with inmates serving life sentences for murder, fraud and drug trafficking.
Two climate activists scrawled blue ink across a series of Andy Warhol screen prints at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, Australia this week to raise awareness of the country’s fossil fuel subsidies.
Images and video of the protest posted to social media show the two activists also trying to glue their hands to the famous print series titled Campbell’s Soup I, which is framed and under glass.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News:
Adrian Piper's "Funk Lessons" (1982-84) was a series of performances and collaborative events in which the artist taught white participants about black funk music, its culture, and its history, aiming to deconstruct stereotypical ideas about Black culture.
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.
In France, abstention, vote of protest, lassitude or violent reactions rise from all over the crisis of our "representative democracy ».
What about thinking the other way round ? What if we reappropriate the iconography of the election?
What happens to explicitly political art when it’s placed inside of the White Cube? Paint the Protest, a group show curated by Nancy Spector at Off Paradise self-consciously poses this question, and further aims to reveal the place and purpose of activist art in general.
On August 14th 2014 several prominent statues within the city centre and the southern suburbs of Cape Town got redressed in green blankets, equipped with miner gear or carrying grocery bags. The statues – mainly of which represent colonial figures – were redressed in light of what has come to be known as the Marikana Massacre: the shooting of 34 miners by the local police force of Marikana, South Africa on August 16th, 2012.
In “Speech/Acts,” a group exhibition organized by Meg Onli at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Tiona Nekkia McClodden stood out as artists who take up voices, histories, and experiences that can help audiences move forward and endure in the future.
There are no whistles, no loud speakers, and no placards held up high in this quiet act of subversion. Pimsiri Petchnamrob stands silently in a mass of sharply dressed Bangkok commuters, her hands clutched around a copy of George Orwell's 1984.
Next to her a small group of young men and women, their faces sombre and their heads bowed low, also read books about fictional and real totalitarian worlds in silence.
Miku is a Japanese virtual idol. She is 16 years old. Miku is created in 2007 and has been heavily promoted since 2008 and was originally aimed at professional musicians. On September 12, 2007, Amazon.co.jp reported sales of Hatsune Miku totaling 57,500,000 yen, making her the number one selling software of that time. She was the first vocal to be developed and distributed by Crypton Future Media and sung in Japanese.
Kwame Brathwaite, the photographer and activist whose work gave a visual identity to the “Black is Beautiful” movement, died on April 1. He was 85.
The news was shared by his son, Kwame Brathwaite, Jr., in an Instagram post. “I am deeply saddened to share that my Baba, the patriarch of our family, our rock and my hero has transitioned,” Brathwaite, Jr. wrote. “Thank you for your love and support during this difficult time.”
After winning the TED Prize on March 2, 2011, the French-artist JR launched the Inside Out Project, in his first TED Talk. Using his own artistic practice as inspiration, this participatory platform helps individuals and communities to make a statement by displaying large-scale black and white portraits in public spaces. Through their “Actions,” communities around the world have sparked collaborations and conversations.
Ge Yulu’s artistic practice playfully pulls at the strings of a social system that, although seemingly all-encompassing, is in fact a malleable structure consisting of individual human beings. For his 2016 project Eye Contact, Ge positioned himself in front of a surveillance camera and stared directly into the lens for hours, then negotiated with a security guard to buy the footage.
Imagine if back in the 1960s, creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee had found inspiration for The Avengers in Yoruba mythology. Instead of Iron Man, we'd have the warrior Oxaguiã. Taking the place of the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Norse god Thor would be the equally strong and black-skinned Xangô, the ruler of justice — who also happens to carry a hammer.
Carlos Hernández Chávez is a Mexican-American muralist who brings the spirit of 20th-century Mexican muralism into modern New England. Chávez’s murals address key social justice themes, including immigration, workers’ rights, and cultural identity, challenging viewers to acknowledge and reflect on pressing societal issues.
'White Walls Say Nothing’ is the first feature-length film of its kind to explore art and activism in the streets of Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires is a complex, chaotic city. It has European style and a Latin American heart. It has oscillated between dictatorship and democracy for over a century, and its citizens have barely known political or economic stability.
Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster is the traveling version of the first major exhibition devoted to the University of Rochester's collection of HIV/AIDS-related posters. It illustrates to a broad audience that "AIDS affects everyone" and through the use of language and imagery, shows how messaging and information around HIV is shared to different groups, audiences, and people throughout the world.
"Politaoke is non-partisan political karaoke project in which participants can respeak real contemporary political speeches from local, national and international politicians. Now you too can deliver the great rhetoric filled speeches of today’s most important politicians in this audience participation performance! Just come to a show, select a speech and take the mic when your name is called.
(NEWS 8) — A day after pulling double-duty as both the host and musical guest on "Saturday Night Live," actor-writer-comedian-musician Donald Glover was garnering attention on Sunday for another reason.
Social media blew up this weekend with reactions to Glover's new music video for "This is America," released under the name of his musical alter ego, Childish Gambino.