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:
During a cold January morning in 2020, Animanaturalis, a nonprofit group focused on ending the suffering of animals across Spain and Latin America gathered to protest the use, production, and sale of fur in Spain. In a blog post on their website, the group discusses the horrid living conditions on fur farms as well as statistics and alternatives related to fur sales (Animanaturalis, n.d.).
In 2013, Ghana ThinkTank received a Creative Capital Award for Emerging Fields, enabling them to begin the multi-year ThinkTank at the Border project. In this project, they are collecting problems from civilian border patrols like the Minutemen, "Patriot" groups, and Nativist organizations, and bringing them to be solved by think tanks of undocumented workers in San Diego and recently deported immigrants in Tijuana.
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.
In state capitals and street protests, women’s rights activists have been wearing red robes and white bonnets based on “The Handmaid's Tale,” the 1985 novel that is now a series on Hulu.
Silent, heads bowed, the activists in crimson robes and white bonnets have been appearing at demonstrations against gender discrimination and the infringement of reproductive and civil rights.
China's underground hiphop became an art movement since early 2000s. With characteristics of self-expression, localization and social criticism, Chinese hip hop music quickly gained popularity among students and working-class Chinese. Some notable music groups from Beijing include Yin Ts'ang (隐藏) and In3er (阴三儿).
In the fall of 2011, Urbano’s teen artists and artist-in-residence Neil Horsky partnered with professional artists,
educators, librarians, and historians to undertake a critical investigation of
Boston’s Freedom Trail. During the
investigative process teen artists questioned the assumptions, accuracy,
comprehensiveness, and impartiality of public presentations of the city’s
On the afternoon of September 11th, nearly a hundred people hugged each other to feel the beauty of the hug on the Paris Square in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, under the leadership of the Chinese artist Gao Brothers. At the beginning of the event, the Germans have not yet adapted to the behavior of embracing strangers, but encouraged by Gao brothers, people have opened their arms and gave the strangers around them a warm hug.
“Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic” features six dances written inside a prison, a 35-minute dance film, and 11 artists (seven choreographic interpreters and four formerly incarcerated narrators) conversing on dancing in carceral spaces.
In 2007, Andrew Danziger had an architecture class assignment at the University of Texas at Austin to propose an urban intervention in Austin. The goal was to think about public art in unexpected ways. One classmate dreamed up a blank traffic sign; another suggested putting a bench at a bus stop that lacked one. Danziger hit on the idea of installing swings in surprising places, and then he went beyond the assignment by actually doing it.
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.
Text by Seth Cohen
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On Friday night, as U.S. television screens burned with images of peaceful protests turning violent, Nike released a new socially conscious ad calling on Americans to do something quite different than the brand’s usual call to “Just Do It.” Instead, one of the nation’s leading athletic apparel companies called on individuals to not turn their back on the painful issue of racism in the United States.
It took 17 high schoolers, eight mentors from Kansas City and a 1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia to create the first ever social media powered car.
The concept was to bring MINDDRIVE to life with tweets, posts, shares and likes which were monitored by an Arduino device. This open-source, single-board microcontroller triggered the vehicle’s motor based on the number of tweets and posts about the project.
Dressed head to toe in plastic, Modou Fall is a familiar sight in Dakar. But however playful his costume, his goal couldn’t be more serious: ridding the capital of the scourge of plastic bags.
With the aim to confuse and 'stir up the shit', Brainstone built and launched a website that looked like the beloved Tea Party had given up on its right-wing clowns and finally supported Obama.
The site drew lots of twitter, blogger. social media and news site reaction. Members of Brainstone were frequently requested to conduct interviews and spent tons of hours responding to emails.
Jordan Peele discovered halfway through the making of “Get Out” what story he wanted to tell: A horror-thriller for black audiences that delivered a searing satirical critique of systemic racism.
The ad agency Badger & Winters in collaboration with immigrant rights nonprofit organization Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) installed 20 cages with mannequins representing immigrant children inside across New York City. Each cage had a sign that said #NoKidsInCages and played audio of a child crying.
In the wake of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Black Lives Matter supporters are finding creative ways to make sure the movement is acknowledged everywhere.
When ordering at Starbucks, people have changed their name to “Black Lives Matter” so that, when their order is up, the baristas have to yell out their new moniker.
Alejandro Ghersi, the Venezuelan-born artist behind Arca, is part of a relatively recent and growing diaspora, and at a time when the political situation back home is at a fever pitch, it feels difficult not to see the ways this album relates to the anguish of that experience.