Projects tagged "Visual Arts"

THE SAHMAT COLLECTIVE: ART AND ACTIVISM IN INDIA SINCE 1989
Practitioner:
The Sahmat Collective is co-curated by Jessica Moss, Smart Museum Associate Curator for Contemporary Art, and Ram Rahman, a photographer, independent curator, and founding member of Sahmat.
Date:
Jan 1 2015
In 1989, playwright, actor, and activist Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked by political thugs while performing a street play outside of Delhi. His death led to the founding of Sahmat, an influential artist collective that has taken a consistent stance against the threats of religious fundamentalism and sectarianism in India through a vibrant mix of high art and street culture.
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It Looks Like Bansky Has Struck the Wall of England’s Reading Prison, Which Once Detained Oscar Wilde, in His Latest Mural
Practitioner:
Banksy
Date:
Mar 1 2021
"It appears that Banksy has struck again, this time painting the brick wall of the former Reading Prison in Berkshire, England, where Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years over his “indecent” affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
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City Forest Mural
Practitioner:
Aretha Brown Amplify, Converse
Date:
Apr 8 2021
The sneaker brand Converse has commissioned an indigenous artist in Australia to create a gigantic mural with a surprising twist. The Melbourne mural plays homage to indigenous urban identity and was painted with a special type of pollution-absorbing paint that “cleans the air,” according to the agency behind the project, Amplify.
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Los Intocables
Practitioner:
Erik Ravelo
Date:
Sep 1 2013
A CUBAN artist's controversial photographs of children being hung from crosses has landed him in hot water. Erik Ravelo took a series of photos of children hung like Jesus from a cross, but in the place of the cross were soldiers, surgeons, priests and Ronald McDonald.
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Healing Torture Through Art
Practitioner:
Najah al-Bukai
Date:
Feb 1 2018
Najah al-Bukai cannot forget. As an accomplished artist in Syria before the war, Mr. Bukai had long thought his photographic memory was his greatest asset, allowing him to recreate scenes on his sketch pads and canvases days, months and even years after he witnessed them. But now, after he has survived two stretches in the Syrian government’s notorious detention centers, his sharp memories only serve to haunt him.
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General Idea and the AIDS crises
Practitioner:
General Idea Collective
Date:
Jan 27 2017
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.
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The Origins of Totalitarianism: A Reading by Donald Trump
Practitioner:
Joseph DeLappe
Date:
Oct 1 2024
The Origins of Totalitarianism:Donald Trump reads Hannah Arendt AI video and sound. 2024, 24:30mins YouTube link: https://youtu.be/RzWi51prZlA?si=hTUP4F-_nOSijbba
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Effects of Gentrification in Madrid
Practitioner:
El Rey de la Ruina
Date:
Dec 27 2020
El Rey de la Ruina (The King of the Ruin) has become an act of powerful recognizable symbolism throughout Madrid. In terms of his popular heart symbolism, the artist chose the organ, a heart, as one of his favorite symbols because he was diagnosed when he was little with cardiomegaly, an abnormal increase in the volume of the heart, which is what inspired this organ as his prize art symbol.
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Homeworkers
Practitioner:
Margaret F. Harrison
Date:
Jan 1 1977
Homeworkers 1977 is the central piece of a multidisciplinary project that comprised photographs, interviews, news clippings and a large canvas documenting the situation of non-unionised women doing manual work at home.
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Concrete Creek
Practitioner:
Shai Zakai
Date:
Mar 24 2001
Utilizing excess construction cement that was being dumped into a creek near Beit Shemesh, Israel, Shai Zakai harnessed the unclaimed cement to create an art installation that brought awareness to the ongoing pollution. The project was entitled, 'Concrete Creek' aimed to bring the community closer to their environment. Zakai installed cement flags and set them among the river.
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Street Art Project Uses Building Facades to Spread the Word About 314 Endangered Bird Species
Practitioner:
Audonon Mural Project
Date:
Jan 1 2016
In a visually captivating public art venture, the Audonon Mural Project seeks to raise awareness for species of birds threatened by climate change in a rather unconventional way—street art. A collaboration between the National Audubon Society and Gitler &_____ Gallery, scatterings of stunning avian themed murals are cropping up throughout John James Audubon’s old Manhattan neighbourhood.
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Street Art and Activism With 'The Slumlord Project' In Baltimore
Practitioner:
The Slumlord Watch
Date:
Oct 9 2013
In a twist on the Broken Windows Theory, street artists are using their skills to combat urban blight in Baltimore with "The Slumlord Project". By drawing the attention of neighbors to abandoned and vacant properties and giving pertinent ownership information to take action on, 17 artists are spray painting and wheat-pasting in a D.I.Y.
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The Balloon Project by Yan Kong
Practitioner:
Asian American Women Artists Alliance
Date:
Oct 10 2019
The Balloon Project, is a three-year-in-the-making Art Installation by Yan Kong in support of world refugees and migrants. It pays tribute to human spirit, courage and survival. The Balloon Project is a multimedia work incorporating mechanical engineering and visuals to fuse art and politics. 32 balloons inflate and deflate to simulate refugee and migrants' breathing while fleeing their countries to seek safety and freedom in the world.
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Female Writer 她--美女作家
Practitioner:
Yu Hong 喻红
Date:
Jan 1 2004
Yu Hong’s Female Writer, a painted and photographic portrait of the writer Zhao Bo 趙波 (b. 1971), recalls courtly images of idealized beauties. Yu, however, deliberately complicates the perspective in her composition: she asked the sitters for her She series to select photographs of themselves that could be paired with her paintings, meaning that the images together convey dual female perspectives, both the artist’s and the subject’s.
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Reframing Trash Into Art
Practitioner:
Vik Muniz
Date:
Sep 15 2008
In 2008, my work as an artist took me to a gigantic landfill outside Rio de Janeiro called Jardim Gramacho. After operating for more than 30 years, the sanitary facility, once one of the largest in the world, had reached its maximum capacity and was on the eve of closing permanently.
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AIDS Memorial Quilt
Practitioner:
Cleve Jones
Date:
Nov 1 1985
In June of 1987, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the disease.
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100 Faces of War Experience
Practitioner:
Matt Mitchell
Date:
Jan 1 2009
On completion the 100 Faces project will consist of 100 Portraits of Americans who have been to the theaters of war in Iraq or Afghanistan (OEF,OIF). Each portrait is accompanied by a placard featuring a statement written by the person pictured and a brief biography of the person pictured. The biographical information and the statement reflect the person at the time of the creation of the portrait.
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Red Sand Project
Practitioner:
Molly Gochman
Date:
Jun 2 2014
The Red Sand Project is a participatory art installation and social awareness project created by artist and activist Molly Gochman in 2014. The project aims to raise awareness about human trafficking, which is a global issue that affects an estimated 40 million people, including men, women, and children who are subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and other forms of exploitation.
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Maya Lin's Eco-Art at Pace Gallery
Practitioner:
Maya Lin
Date:
May 6 2013
Artist Maya Lin first burst onto the scene in 1981, when her design was selected for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while she was still a senior at Yale. Since then, Lin has turned her focus to environmental issues, with her most recent show at Pace Gallery investigating Manhattan’s landscape and environmental history.
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Artists Buy Trump Campaign Bus on Craigslist, Turn It Into Anti-Trump Art Project
Practitioner:
http://truttartist.com/
Date:
Oct 1 2015
Two artists have repurposed the presidential candidate’s campaign bus in order to critique his controversial views. In October 2015, the artists David Gleeson and Mary Mihelic purchased a Donald Trump tour bus on Craigslist.
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Aqua Dice
Practitioner:
Francois Rougier
Date:
Dec 12 2012
"Featuring giant ocean dice that originally appeared in the booklet "drift" by Max Mulhern, these dice were launched in international waters to create a visually stunning ode to chance and luck. This project can also be found under the title: "the greatest floating craps game on earth"." --AquaDice website
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Day after Debt
Practitioner:
Ahmet Ögüt
Date:
Nov 23 2014
The artist conceived the project as a collaborative exhibition featuring five art-as-response pieces to the student loan crisis and the pressure it causes upon graduates. In its original version, Öğüt invited Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Superflex, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler to present sculptures as collection points for public contribution to The Debt Collective, a student-debt canceling initiative launched by Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee.
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John Heartfield's Anti-Nazi Photomontages
Practitioner:
John Heartfield
Date:
May 13 1935
John Heartfield began to make photomontages as a member of the Berlin branch of international Dada around 1920. Schooled in graphic arts and having worked briefly in animated film, Heartfield (who had anglicized his given name, Helmut Herzfeld, in 1917 as a protest against wartime nationalism) subsequently developed a cinematic effect in montages that he made for book illustration.
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Cloud Studies
Practitioner:
Forensic Architecture
Date:
May 29 2020
Forensic Architecture's Cloud Studies is a project that investigates the impact of toxic clouds on colonised and oppressed communities. The clouds, originating from sources like tear gas, industrial emissions, chemical weapons, and forest fires, often go unaddressed due to doubt and denialism.
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Ringgold's art - a visual symphony that harmonizes activism
Practitioner:
Faith Ringgold
Date:
Jan 1 1997
Faith Ringgold is a successful painter, sculptor, mixed-media artist, author, feminist, and political activist. She is particularly known for her narrative quilts, as she explores identity, race, family ties, as well as cultural and political topics through her many different forms of storytelling. “I have always wanted to tell my story or, more to the point, my side of the story” - Faith Ringgold
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