Main Gallery

UK Brandalism Campaign
Practitioner:
Various Artists
Date:
May 12 2014
From Glasgow to Brighton the streets of the UK looked a little different the morning of Monday 5/12/14. In 10 cities around the UK guerrilla install crews have been swapping over 300 ads with art works, creating the largest advertising takeover in world history.
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When the Sky Blooms With Sakura—the first daytime fireworks in the sky above Yotuskura Beach in Iwaki City
Practitioner:
Cai Guoqiang
Date:
Jun 26 2023
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.
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STITCHING TOGETHER: GARMENT WORKERS IN SOLIDARITY
Practitioner:
Taslima Akhter, Magnum Foundation
Date:
Sep 12 2018
On April 24, 2013, more than 1,000 lives were taken in the Rana Plaza Collapse. While history remembers this tragic event as the deadliest garment factory accident, activist and photographer Taslima Akhter reveals a story of dreams crushed by structural murder. Dedicating her career to the lives and struggles of garment workers in Bangladesh, she has continued to foster a community rallying together for safer working conditions.
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Portugal's Carnation Revolution
Practitioner:
Celeste Caeiro
Date:
Apr 25 1974
Celeste Caeiro, who on April 25, 1974, handed out red carnations to soldiers on their way to ending a 40-year right-wing dictatorship in Portugal, a spontaneous patriotic act that gave a largely bloodless coup its name, the Carnation Revolution, and her an enduring appellation, “the Lady of the Carnations,” died on Friday in Lisbon. She was 91.
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Artists Tried to Activate Voters With Billboard Art. Did It Work?
Practitioner:
Hank Willis Thomas
Date:
Jan 13 2025
On Nov. 6, the day after the presidential election, the artist Hank Willis Thomas was at his studio in Brooklyn. His production assistants were poring over tables strewed with blobby red white and blue silk-screen prints of the words “Fragile/ Democracy / Handle With Care” in capital letters.
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NYC Artist Is Using Her Unapologetically Brown Identity to Empower Others
Practitioner:
Johanna Toruno
Date:
Jul 1 2017
You’ll find Johanna Toruno on the streets of NYC plastering pictures of her flower-filtered poetry, Kendrick Lamar, and Selena on blank walls, street lights and buildings. When I came across The Unapologetically Brown Series on Instagram I was intrigued not only by the name but by the concept of being unapologetic and brown as the premise for a body of street art.
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dronestream
Practitioner:
Josh Begley
Date:
May 10 2013
Josh Begley, a Data Artist and NYU Student, took publicly available information on recorded drone strikes and designed an interface for people to connect and sympathize with the reality of U.S. drone attacks.
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Yang Li: The 'punchline queen' who offended Chinese men
Practitioner:
Yang Li
Date:
Jan 24 2021
China's "Punchline Queen" Yang Li is no stranger to controversy. The 29-year-old is now one of the country's most well-known comedians, having risen to fame in recent months on a Chinese television show called "Rock and Roast". Every week, in front of a national audience of millions, she addresses controversial gender issues using a style unfamiliar to many Chinese viewers - stand-up comedy.
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Kodaikanal Won't video: All you need to know about the Unilever mercury dumping case
Practitioner:
Chennai artist Sofia Ashraf
Date:
Jul 30 2015
The Kodaikanal Won't video by Chennai artist Sofia Ashraf, asking Unilver to 'clean up their mess' in connection with the Kodaikanal mercury dumping, has gone viral with over 783,533 views at the time of writing this, in just over two days. It has been shared on social media by prominent personalities such as Nandita Das, Varun Grover, Vishal Dadlani and was even praised by Nicki Minaj, on whose song Anaconda, the rap is based on.
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Joey Skaggs: novelty silliness and well-packaged rebellion
Practitioner:
Joey Skaggs
Date:
May 9 2013
In July 1976, prankster and satirist Joey Skaggs, calling himself Giuseppe Scaggoli, appeared before a rabid crowd, dressed in sharp-lapeled finery. He had some unfortunate news: that day’s planned auction of rock star sperm was cancelled due to a mysterious theft. All he could offer in the way of comfort were his assurances that more donations were to be sought as soon as possible.
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Crack is Wack
Practitioner:
Keith Haring
Date:
Jun 27 1986
Without having been commissioned—or even given legal permission at all—Haring set out to create Crack Is Wack on the wall of an abandoned handball court in a park at 2nd Avenue and East 128th Street on June 27, 1986. Upon the completion of the mural, Haring was arrested by the New York City Police Department for vandalism of city property and faced potential jail time in addition to heavy fines.
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Iran’s Shaming of Young Dancer Draws Backlash
Practitioner:
Maedeh Hojabri
Date:
Jul 9 2018
"But Ms. Hojabri lives in Iran, where women are not allowed to dance, at least not in public. The 19-year-old was quietly arrested in May and her page was taken down, leaving her 600,000 followers wondering where she had gone.
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45 Tweets
Practitioner:
Wonkles
Date:
Apr 25 2017
I have been composing and singing a selection of our President's tweets. I have two goals for this ongoing project. One is to laugh which helps all of us deal with the high anxiety of our times. The second is to shine new light on the absurd, troubled and baffling mind of our 45th President. There’s something utterly satisfying when I hear his words sung in an earnest lilting voice. I hope it compels you to think and listen in a whole new way.
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Rolling Jubilee
Practitioner:
Strike Debt
Date:
Nov 1 2013
Across the United States, 2,693 people have received a letter in the last few months, which identified a debt and read: "You are no longer under any obligation to settle this account with the original creditor, the bill collector, or anyone else." This is the work of the Rolling Jubilee project – a non-profit initiative which buys personal debt for pennies on the dollar in the secondary market (where debt is sold to companies who then resell i
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Voices from the Conflict
Practitioner:
Benji Blatt, Aly Arkin
Date:
Dec 12 2023
Our NGO “Voices from the Conflict” seeks to open a conversation about the Israel-Palestine conflict through the lens of activist art. The history of the conflict dates back to the UN partition plan in 1947, followed by Israel’s independence in 1948. Since then, there have been several armed engagements between the two actors- causing massive civilian casualties and terrorism.
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52 Shades of Greed: An Illustrated Education
Practitioner:
Alternative Banking, Marc Sheff
Date:
Sep 4 2012
After being contacted by a member of the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking group , illustrator Marc Scheff agreed to do a few drawings for a deck of cards depicting some of the people and institutions responsible for causing the Great Recession.
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Performative Radicalism: the Kumbi PSYOP
Practitioner:
BG Kumbi
Date:
Jul 16 2017
The internet has reshaped the ways we learn and communicate. Information becomes heuristic, concomitantly - knowledge becomes protean. If you dedicate enough time to any particular platform, you are likely to acquire a community with congenial individuals. Social media’s proliferation has obfuscated the lines between reality and fiction. Embraced as a tool for many, these digital spaces typically have no monitoring process.
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Not All Like That
Practitioner:
John Shore, all Netizens
Date:
Aug 1 2013
John Shore and his wife Catherine had been attending the First Presbyterian Church of San Diego for six years when they were nominated to serve as deacons. But before they could be ordained, they were asked to sign a document agreeing that no person in a same-sex relationship should hold any position of authority within the church, which is one of the city’s oldest. It was 1990.
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4
Kelmti Horra (My Word is Free)
Practitioner:
Emel Mathlouthi
Date:
Mar 10 2012
Emel Mathlouthi (Arabic: آمال المثلوثي) is a Tunisian singer-songwriter best known for her protest songs "Ya Tounes Ya Meskina" (Poor Tunisia) and "Kelmti Horra" (My Word is Free) which became anthems for the Tunisian revolution and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
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A Guide to the Afrofuturist House Music of Dirty Bird
Practitioner:
Dirty Bird / gum.mp3
Date:
Apr 15 2021
In 1996, filmmaker John Akomfrah created the character of the Data Thief as a narrative device to offer an insightful study of Afrofuturism in his film The Last Angel of History, which links Black musicians including George Clinton, Derrick May, and Sun Ra to Akomfrah’s thesis about the role of technological fantasy in Black artistry across genres and mediums.
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