Counterspace is an independent curatorial platform functioning as the first decolonial thinktank mapping cultural activism worldwide. It shapes collectively decolonial toolkits with common tools and resources, and a global directory browsable by continent, praxis, and social construct, as a Beuys-inspired ‘social sculpture’ revisited, and an alternative map of the universe.
In this article, author Caroline Choi highlights different grafiti artists and their stories. These artists use their talent to tell their stories, ones that might not get to be told otherwise. She goes into the history of grafiti, and how it ties into how rich and white the art world has become.
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.
Boricua artist Castorillo discusses the crisis, diaspora, and the enduring significance of the Young Lords Party for Puerto Rican social movements today using illustrations:
"One morning, when JR awoke, an image lingered from his dreams: The wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and above it a young kid peering curiously over. A child just 1 year old, who has "no idea that's a wall that divides people — he has no idea of the political context," JR imagined.
Tania Bruguera, in partnership with the Queens Museum of Art, began a long term art project in form of an artist initiated socio-political movement. Immigrant Movement International is an organization headquartered in the multinational neighborhood of Corona, Queens. The organization engages local, national and international audiences and focuses on the issues of immigration reform.
Peter Marks Review from the Washington Post:
“As Far as My Fingertips Take Me,” a performance piece about the ordeal of seeking refuge by Tania El Khoury that’s being presented for the next 2½ weeks in the lobby of Woolly Mammoth Theatre. For this hypnotic, one-audience-member-at-a-time experience, you pass through the door of a white-walled booth and slip into a white lab coat before putting on a pair of headphones.
Highlights:
A handful of teens donned puffy quinceañera dresses to protest against the “sanctuary cities” ban.
The teens gave paper flowers to lawmakers who voted against SB 4 and flyers to those who voted in favor.
Texas teens took part in a quinceañera-themed protest on the south steps of the Capitol to voice their opposition to Senate Bill 4, the so-called sanctuary cities ban.
Activists fighting coronavirus-driven hate crimes are rallying on social media to turn masks into a symbol, rather than a target in racist attacks
Jeff Elder Apr 6, 2020, 2:03 PM
Activists against COVID-19-related hate crimes are leading a social media campaign using images of people in masks to fight back against attacks on Asian-Americans, which Congress and the FBI say are increasing.
Siempre Unidas is a feminist collective in the state of Quintana Roo (Mexico) that works partly through street art. In 2021, in response to the femicide of Victoria Salazar – a refugee from El Salvador who died in police custody – the collective began an anti-femicide mural project called RestaurAmoras.
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration. It also marks the one-year anniversary of the Women's March his election inspired, the largest single-day protest in the nation's history.
When Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries established their grandest museums, each building meant to unite the world’s cultural heritage under a single roof, they had no doubt as to who should explain it all: themselves. They took a Eurocentric view, categorizing the spoils of colonial enterprise by nation and region, splitting art from craft, and nature from culture.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered a Berlin landmark with thousands of refugee life jackets for his latest installation. The striking display was the activist's attempt to highlight the scale of migrants taking to the seas every day.
Ghana ThinkTank is an international collective that “develops the first world” by flipping traditional power dynamics, asking the “third world” to intervene into the lives of the people living in the so-called “developed” world.
The No Hate Speech campaign has come to its fourth anniversary this week, because it was on the 18th of March 2013 when the Spanish Institute for Youth IMG_9707(INJUVE) officially launched the campaign in Spain, to commemorate the 21st of March, declared by the UN as Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of that year.
In response to an earlier project called "Daily Bread, Gregg Segal collaborated with the United Nations Refugee Agency to bring awareness to the crisis of refugees fleeing Venezuela through his project "Un-Daily Bread."
Art has the power to move our imaginations and bodies, transforming the emotional and physical spaces we share. It has the power to build and transform social relations and to bring about equity and justice.
For a brief moment on Wednesday night it appeared that Belgium had disappeared. The main French language television station hoodwinked the country into thinking that it had split in two when it reported that Flanders had issued a unilateral declaration of independence.
A creative action against the introduction of mandatory immigration checks and upfront charging in the UK’s National Health Service, including a systematic social media campaign under the hashtag
Horror stories about treacherous boat journeys from Africa to the Mediterranean far too often make headline news. The men, women and children fleeing their homes to start a new life in Europe become faceless numbers in the media, and are ‘othered’ by conservative politicians for their own agenda.
Add Colour (Refugee Boat) begins as an all-white boat in an all-white room. Ono’s instruction for this collective, participatory work reads: ‘Just blue like the ocean.’ You are invited to contribute your hopes and beliefs in blue and white.
An installation by architecture studio Rael San Fratello, which connected children in the US and Mexico via a trio of seesaws slotted into the countries' border wall, has been crowned the Design of the Year.
Dubbed the Teeter-Totter Wall, the project was in place for only around 40 minutes in July of 2019 and hoped to foster a sense of unity at the divisive border, which was highly politicised under the Trump administration.
“Misplaced Women?” is an art project-workshop by Tanja Ostojic in which she and project`s participants – artists , art students , cultural workers and activists: Nela Antonovic, Gorana Bacevac, Nadezda Kircanski, Tatjana Beljinac, Milica Jankovic, Tamara Bijelic, Irena Djukanovic, Bojana Radenovic, Marija Jevtic, Irena Mirkovic, Jelena Dinic, Sanja Solunac and Suncica Sido showed the everyday life activities that are characteristic for migrants, refugee