During 2008-2009, when the United States was entering a recession, the idea of the Homeless Art Gallery was popping up across Staten Island, New York City's least populated borough and biggest underdog. This is an example of art intervention, disrupting space to question the economic and political systems of capitalism. It was also an excellent community building project.
Tiny Pricks is a public art project created and curated by Diana Weymar. Contributors from around the world are stitching Donald Trump’s words into textiles, creating the material record of his presidency and of the movement against it. Tiny Pricks Project holds a creative space in a tumultuous political climate.
“Works in Progress” highlights artists across a range of disciplines whose work deals with ecological themes. Considering the particular role that artists play in the climate movement, this column shares their voices and provides a glimpse behind the curtain into their creative processes and experiences.
In 1991, Gonzalez-Torres lost his partner Ross to AIDS (the artist would face the same fate in 1996). In a tragic and highly personal tribute to Ross, Gonzalez-Torres took a picture of his still-indented empty bed - an image of universal intimacy and loss - and placed it on two dozen commercial billboard spaces throughout New York.
“Judy Chicago: Herstory” will span Judy Chicago’s sixty-year career to encompass the full breadth of the artist’s contributions across painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, textiles, photography, stained glass, needlework, and printmaking. Expanding the boundaries of a traditional museum survey, the exhibition will place six decades of Chicago’s work in dialogue with work by other women across centuries in a unique Fourth Floor installation.
It was once the most feared address in Berlin, a place easy to enter but very hard to leave. Now the ruins of the former engine room of Nazi terror at Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin have been preserved in a new exhibition space open to the public from tomorrow.
In September 2003 the news went out nationwide: Karlsplatz, one of Vienna's main squares, is soon to be renamed Nikeplatz. Apart from the new name, it appears that a huge monument in the shape of Nike's famous "Swoosh" logo will be built in Nikeplatz. Needless to say, it is all fake.
A village shop in Coniston is stocked by local producers with everything from farm meat and vegetables to paintings and knitted goods. The produce is all homemade and brought in by local suppliers. Customers are invited to buy goods in the shop for an 'honest' price, there are guideline price tags attached to the items by the producer but customers are expected to pay what they consider an honest, suitable price for the item.
ParaSITE: Custom built inflatable shelters designed for homeless people that attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The warm air leaving the building simultaneously inflates and heats the double membrane structure.
Artist Luke Jerram created a genderless sleeping figure made of glass lying on a piece of cardboard and exhibited in the streets of London. The artist said in an interview "For every person you see sleeping on the streets, there are many others sleeping in hostels, squats and other forms of unsatisfactory and insecure accommodation.
Northeast Minneapolis is going to have the first full-fledged water bar of its kind, an establishment where you can sit and drink a variety of local tap waters to your heart’s content. Their delightful motto: “Water is all we have.”
In 1982, for documenta 7, Beuys proposed a plan to plant 7000 oaks throughout the city of Kassel, each paired with a basalt stone. The 7000 stones were piled up on the lawn in front of the Museum Fridericianum with the idea that the pile would shrink every time a tree was planted. The project, seen locally as a gesture towards green urban renewal, took five years to complete and has spread to other cities around the world.
Brandalism, an organization out of the UK that aims to reclaim public spaces from advertisers, used Black Friday to protest "partner" brands to the COP21 Climate Conference.
Anonymous artists contributed subvertisements that criticized these brand for their hypocrisy in saying they are advocates for the environment when more often than not they are the worst contributors to the problem.
“Mapping skin deep” is an audiovisual public installation consisting of portraits with testimonies from refugee/undocumented immigrants currently residing in Montreal and elsewhere. Their bodies have been scarred in post-production tracing the route they took from their homeland to Montreal, hence mapping them skin deep.
Located in Thomas Paine Plaza, across the street from City Hall, Hank Willis Thomas’s All Power to All People was a public art intervention that dealt with racial identity and representation in Philadelphia.
Legendary activist and artist Ed Bereal will be able to have his work displayed again in the newly reopened Portland Art Museum. He is a complex figure, gaining fame in LA in the 1960s for his abstract works and radical performances. His work also includes critiquing politicians in a satirical way.
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.
In 2001, Peter Gibson, a street artist, began by painting bike additional bike lanes onto the streets in Montreal because he was tired of how cars dominated the road. This transferred into more works criticizing car culture in general. Some of his work includes a crosswalk turned into a large footprint and lines on the road transformed into life lines.
Debuting at Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, July 14 – September 30 for FRONTart 2018 is ‘The American Library’ by Yinka Shonibare MBE, a celebration of the diversity of the American population. It aims to be an instigator of discovery and debate. The thousands of books in this art installation are covered in the artist’s signature Dutch wax printed cotton textile.
We were ‘Superheroes’ and had fun, colourful, engaging activities which had a high visual impact with a purpose to engage the head, hand and heart. We believe that everyone has superpowers within and they just need to be released but that all superheroes need a rest in order be at their best for themselves and others.
The Bed-Stuy “aquarium” is back.
The neighborhood’s beloved sidewalk fish pond was resurrected this week — in an act of defiance that comes just five days after the city cemented over the original and left the neighborhood’s goldfish to die.
The Monument Quilt is an on-going collection of stories of survivors of rape and abuse. By stitching our stories together, we are creating and demanding public space to heal. We are building a new culture where survivors are publicly supported rather than publicly shamed. From 2013-2016, more and more stories will be added to The Monument Quilt as participants make their own squares, host workshops, and organize local displays of the quilt.
"The Uni Project aims to do one thing and do it well: temporarily
transform almost any available urban space into a public reading room
and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and
learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at
street-level in our cities." (From site.)