ARTS/CULTURE
FOKAL is the hub in Haiti where locals and international visitors from all walks of life -- artists, writers, citizens, activists-- come together to discuss the most pressing nation- and community-building issues, enjoy cutting edge artistic expressions, and share their ideas.
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.
A toothless garbageman who once wandered Hong Kong’s streets with dingy bags of ink and brushes tied to his crutches is now the subject of a major retrospective. About 300 calligraphic works by the late Tsang Tsou-choi — who is best known by his self-dubbed title, the King of Kowloon — are showing at the ArtisTree art space in a high glass tower.
A mixture of a social cause with a creative vision, this visual art exhibit is dedicated to the millions of unemployed citizens and veteran’s in the United States. Constructed out of 1284 used empty wallets from over 2,000 donated nation wide; this project aims to have a voice about the economic problems our country is facing and show the potential of art to awaken our social consciousness.
The average crow takes less than two hours to travel from Sing Sing maximum-security prison to the Whitney Museum of American Art, institutions separated by just 32 miles of land along New York’s Hudson river. Yet few humans journey between them – museums and prison are at opposite ends of our society’s self-imaginings, and their populations tend not to intersect.
Grey wolves have had a tumultuous relationship with their human neighbors in the Pacific Northwest for more than a hundred years. From nearly being wiped out from the continent, Canadian grey wolves started being reintroduced to the wilderness in the U.S.'s Northern Rockies as early as 1995. The wolves were (and continue to be) placed in areas dense with wilderness and potential prey.
Beginning in February 2014, the New Museum will present the first US museum exhibition devoted to the work of Polish artist Paweł Althamer. The exhibition “The Neighbors” will include a new presentation of the artist’s work, Draftsmen’s Congress, originally presented at the 7th Berlin Biennial (2012).
On Friday night, a painting by the anonymous street artist known as Banksy sold at Sotheby’s auction house in London for $1.4 million. But as soon as the auctioneer dropped the gavel, something unexpected happened: a beeping alarm went off and the frame began eating the painting, spitting half of it out the bottom in what may be the first instance of a self-destructing painting, reports Scott Reyburn at The New York Times.
February 24, 2023 will mark one year since the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine began. Russia is attempting to take over Ukrainian territory and destroy its rich, vibrant culture. Ukrainians are fighting for their country and right to exist as free, independent people. For months, Ukrainians have endured relentless bombardment, destruction, and hardship.
Priya’s Shakti is an augmented reality comic blending Indian mythology with modern storytelling. It follows Priya, a rape survivor turned superhero, challenging cultural taboos around sexual violence and empowering women through art and technology.
In France, abstention, vote of protest, lassitude or violent reactions rise from all over the crisis of our "representative democracy ».
What about thinking the other way round ? What if we reappropriate the iconography of the election?
This project served as an educational tool to demystify the female body and bring awareness to the issues of reproductive rights and the ignorance that sometimes plagues common misconceptions about the reproductive system. I think this campaign is very successful in its approach. It exhibits paintings and displays of uterus and the female form in a non-sexual way.
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.
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.
An oversized facsimile of Rush poppers, tipped over, pouring out its viscous contents: this example of underground gay iconography blown up to almost belligerent proportions perfectly represents the aims of Party Out of Bounds: Nightlife as Activism Since 1980, a new exhibition at La MaMa’s La Galleria. The group show, curated by Emily Colucci and Osman Can Yerebakan, gathers together works by a small yet distinct menagerie of queer artists.
For one day, a group of artists known as the INDECLINE Artist Collective turned a hotel room in New York City's Trump International Hotel into a single jail cell for Donald Trump without the hotel's knowledge. The inside the jail cell was a Donald Trump impersonator in a suit and a "Make America Great Again" hat and at his feet were McDonald's food wrappers and live rats.
A series of three animations and posters to support the campaign titled: Stop the Coal Monster.
Our demands of Nelson City Council and Tasman District Council:
- Prohibit new resource consents for coal use or mining, effectively immediately.
- End all existing consents for coal use or mining by 2025.
- Ensure adequate monitoring of all current coal users.
As the female gaze comes to the fore, artists are beginning to examine and explore the possibilities of what exists, what it is to be a woman looking at the world outside of her self. For American artist Dani Lessnau, the gaze opened the door into uncharted realms in search of the things that a camera can capture that the human eye might otherwise miss.
A young man melting into a puddle of himself is something you don’t see everyday, much less in a busy public square. Yet this humourous but surprisingly effective spectacle is the latest effort by the Red Cross of Argentina to raise awareness about climate change.
“Gravity of Equilibrium” revolves around Mass Shootings in USA. Mass shootings and guns are an incredibly divisive topics, one that is nearly impossible to engage opposing viewpoints in a discussion about. The majority of gun related debates devolve into charged arguments with parties feeling threatened. This effectively creates an environment where new perspectives and inputs are unable to be processed.
The series "No Violence Against Women" depicts famous cartoon couples transformed into victims of abuse. The women are left bloodied and with black eyes with the slogan "What Kind of Man are You?" above. The images are a commentary on domestic violence and were released in honor of International Women's Day
Earlier this month, an anonymous message was posted to the discussion-board Web site 4chan. In it, the author threatened to hurt the video-game developer Zoe Quinn: “Next time she shows up at a conference we … give her a crippling injury that’s never going to fully heal … a good solid injury to the knees. I’d say a brain damage, but we don’t want to make it so she ends up too retarded to fear us.”