“Rose Boy” (玫瑰少年) refers to Yeh Yung-chih, a 15-year-old junior high school student in Taiwan who died on April 20, 2000, after years of bullying due to his non-conforming gender expression. Though the official cause of death was ruled accidental—he allegedly slipped in a school bathroom—the circumstances surrounding his death, including prior complaints from his mother about repeated verbal and physical harassment, drew widespread public attention.
On March 9, 2018, China's largest feminist platform "Voice of Women's Rights"'s Weibo account and WeChat official account were permanently suspended. Before being blocked, its Weibo account had 180,000 fans and the Wechat account had 70,000 fans. In order to retrieve the account, the staff of "Voice of Women's Rights" conducted a long-term struggle to defend their rights.
Non-profit organizations and a multitude of Guatemalan girls protested together demanding justice and security from the government. Guatemala's insecurity and cases of girls' disappearances have increased over the years. The protest started outside the Government Ministery (Ministerio de Gobernación) early in the morning, where protestors gathered riding their bikes.
The Canadian artist collective General Idea found its drive in the AIDS epidemic, becoming aesthetically and conceptually refined in the in the 1970s and ’80s, after long forays into absurdity and performances evocative of Dada and Fluxus.
Shortly after the close of this year’s International Women’s Day, China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo shut down Feminist Voices. With 180,000 followers, the group’s social media account was one of the most important advocacy channels for spreading information about women’s issues in China, but in an instant, it was gone. A few hours later, the private messaging app WeChat also shuttered an account for the group.
Xiao has organized and participated in a series of activities that combine performance art with a strong social message. Despite a well-known Chinese maxim expounding that women "hold up half the sky," feminism has largely been an underground movement in the country. Xiao and her cohorts' mission is to change that by taking up the cause in public, even if it means going to extreme and controversial lengths.
Rokudenashiko is on a mission to free the vagina. In her native country of Japan, the vaginal slang word “manko” is considered taboo while the penis equivalent, “chinko,” is used freely. Rokudenashiko (the pseudonym of artist Megumi Igarashi) uses her manko art to destigmatize the vagina, using it as the basis for whimsical figurines, iPhone cases, dioramas, and, in her most infamous piece, a kayak.
For third world artists who are forced into exile, the creativity process could be greatly challenged due to displacement in language, community and history. Many filmmakers in exile tend to look at their connection to the homeland in strictly political terms, or give up making films overall.
"The walls of the streets of downtown Santiago are covered with stickers, art, words and posters.
The messages are varied and range from "Feminist power" to "All cops are bastards". They have taken over the walls of Zona Cero (Ground Zero), the name given to the area around Plaza de la Dignidad, where anti-government protests have been held - and at times brutally repressed by police - since 18 October.
Daniel Hewson describes the use of protest posters and the work of collective, Burning Museum, and artist, Faith47, in the Fees Must Fall movement taking place in South Africa:
The egregious practice that some Muslim men employ to divorce their wives instantaneously and without their consent, merely by uttering the word talaq (divorce) three times, has finally been declared unconstitutional and illegal by the Indian Supreme Court. The country’s ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) party claims that the ban is a victory for its administration, which had been advocating its abolition since it came to power in 2014.
The video DON’T COVER UP, STEP UP is a public service announcement raising the issue of gender-based violence. In the video, a vlogger teaches her fans how to cover up bruises with makeup after she has been beaten by her husband. There is a twist in the story as the husband enters the scene at the end of the video.
A woman’s head is bisected by a line that splits her face into positive and negative halves. Over the image, a commanding text, stated in the second person, reads: “Your body is a battleground.”
"The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence® is a leading-edge Order of queer nuns. Since our first appearance in San Francisco on Easter Sunday, 1979, the Sisters have devoted ourselves to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.
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.
Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members, all artists - but action, not art, was the aim of the collective. Gran Fury member Loring McAlpin described the collective's mass-market ambition to “...fight for attention as hard as Coca-Cola fights for attention.”
Thousands took to the streets in Lima, Peru, on March 11 to protest conservative presidential frontrunner Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, and demand that her candidacy be revoked amid accusations of vote buying.
For some, International Women’s Day is a day for the celebration of the social, cultural, and professional achievements of women. Many others, on the other hand, believe that we are not yet at the point of celebration, arguing that with gender inequality and gender-based violence rampant worldwide, celebrations are not what International Women’s Day should be about.
Female students from the Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou called for equal job opportunities and for people to "pay attention to the value of women" while protesting on the school's campus, shirtless and covered in body paint.
The photos, taken by ogling passersby, have been circulating on Weibo and naturally netizens stand divided on whether the semi-naked protests were empowering or counterproductive...
Force: Upsetting Rape Culture is a group of creative activists who seek to raise awareness about rape culture and promote consensual sex. They "create art actions to generate attention and get millions of people talking," in hopes that sex can become an empowering act rather than one of violence.
UK photographer Alicia Bruce collaborated with Zero Tolerance, a Scottish non-profit to end GBV, to produce a new version of the Violence Unseen campaign, launched for the first time in the 1990s and created by Franki Raffles. The new one was launched in 2018, 25 years after the original iconic Zero Tolerance campaign, shot by the late Franki Raffles.
Acknowledging that sexual harassment is a serious problem in Egypt, the volunteer based organization HarassMap has created a series of strategies -both on site and online- to stamp out the social acceptability of sexual harassment in the country.
After Afghan artist Malina Suliman's father suffered a brutal attack in their hometown of Kandahar, the Suliman family fled to Mumbai, where they plan on staying until the end of March. Malina is a 23 year-old grafitti artist whose work can be seen throughout Kandahar, including a self-portrait of a skeleton in a burqah that provoked threats from local Taliban. The Suliman family suspects the attack on Mr.
In Oakland, artists created murals and installations to honor activist Angela Davis, celebrating her legacy in fighting for racial and gender justice. These public artworks inspire new generations to continue the struggle for social change.