In the early 1980s Keith Haring created hundreds of drawings in the New York subway system. He used chalk to paint on unused advertising space, which was covered with black sheets of paper. Haring was caught and fined numerous times.
The streets of the Cairo suburb Manshiyat Naser, nicknamed "Garbage City," are lined with trash, and the people who live there — Coptic Christians who make their living sorting through it and recycling anything they can — are called zabaleen, or "garbage people."
The Neistat Brothers first attracted public attention in 2003 with their blatantly critical work, iPod’s Dirty Secret. After being refused a replacement battery for an 18-month old iPod, [they] took to the streets of Manhattan on their bikes to sabotage iPod’s omnipresent advertising.
The money was supposed to be used to create modern art. And it was — but not in the way a Danish museum expected when it gave an artist the equivalent of $84,000. In return, it received two empty canvases.
The artist, Jens Haaning, says the blank canvases make up a new work of art — titled "Take the Money and Run" — that he calls a commentary on poor wages. One thing it's not, he says, is a theft.
The Confined Hearts Project is creating 1468 terracotta anatomical human hearts, one for each person seeking asylum in Australia but being held in detention on Manus Island and in Nauru. Hundreds of people of all ages, backgrounds and cultures have been involved in making the hearts to date.
The image is stark. And shocking.
A black man, his ankles shackled, his head hanging away from the viewer, stands in relief on a field of white. Chains stretching to the image's borders on the left and right pull his arms taut. Fourteen crimson marks crosshatch his back. Within the dark fabric that frames "86 Lashes to Go," a small rectangle is labeled simply "salt."
“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 Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history.
Students at art colleges across China are taking a strong stance in the midst of the largest wave of protests to have gripped the country since 1989. As demonstrations against the government’s strict Covid-19 policies erupted across the country over the weekend, students rallied on campuses to create protest art and graffiti.
The Heidelberg Project is an outdoor art project in Detroit, Michigan. It was created in 1986 by artist Tyree Guyton and his grandfather Sam Mackey ("Grandpa Sam") as an outdoor art environment in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood on the city's east side, just north of the city's historically African-American Black Bottom area.
Jenny Hozler has mined declassified U.S. government documents for the series Redaction Paintings meticulously silk-screened works that depict blacked-out handprints of American soldiers accused of committing crimes in Iraq.
“It could have been me,” Jean-Michel Basquiat would say at the mere mention of the untimely death of Michael Stewart. Stewart, a 25-year-old artist, was allegedly drawing on the walls of the subway on 15 September 1983 when he was approached by transit cops who then placed him under arrest.
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.
Creative activism and the remaking of Palestine
While policy wonks and media pundits wallow in endless debates about Jewish settlements and the threat of terror, Palestinian groups are creatively exploring alternative ways to realise their national aspirations.
New York Times, DAVID FIRESTONE, Published: December 31, 1993
Your son tears the wrapping paper off his fierce new "Talking Duke" G. I. Joe doll and eagerly presses the talk button. Out comes a painfully chirpy voice that sounds astonishingly like Barbie's saying, "Let's go shopping!"
Does your son:
A) Furiously vaporize the doll with his own phaser rifle?
B) Go shopping with Joe?
The Democracy Machine! is a performative sculpture that gives participants the opportunity to experience the thrill of democracy in action, in a competitive game that challenges people to work together toward understanding a better society. Using the spectacle and play of performance drawn from Las Vegas Casinos, gambling machines and game shows, The Democracy Machine!
Since Christmas Eve, some lights along the streets and in the houses of Bushwick have spelled out a number of messages quite different from the festive wishes one usually finds during the holiday season. “GENTRIFICATION IS THE NEW COLONIALISM,” “NOT 4 SALE,” and “NO EVICTION ZONE,” some read.
Aníbal López, also known by his government identification number A-153167, is a pioneer of performance art in Central America. ArtBus describes his work as, "Generally aimed at immersing viewers into the region’s social and political tensions, his works combine the dry language of 1960/1970s conceptual art with the revolutionary ethos of a Latin American guerrillero.
Josep Renau Berenguer was a Spanish painter, photomontager, muralist and communist militant.
Renau was the son of an Art teacher. Due to his father’s low income, he had to work various jobs during his youth and teenage years to maintain a middle class position.
While meditating in front of a Nepalese Sarasvati statue on New Year's Day in 1991 at her California home, Mayumi received a calling that brought a sudden halt to painting. Having witnessed the horrors of atomic bombings as a child and later, watching her beloved Japan become a leader in nuclear-energy, and seeing the effects of depleted uranium, Mayumi had to pursue a global cause greater than her art or feminism.
The "Democracy Wall" in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, New York was established in 2009. This wall is a long-term, community art activist project that is part wall mural, part past information archive.
"The traveling mini-exhibition aims to gather a snap-shot of contemporary cultural production.
Editors collect items and contributions are ongoing." (From site.)
"Vaccines Work. Here Are the Facts." is a short web comic by Maki Naro explaining "The risks, the misinformation, and the science behind history’s greatest life saver."
In the past few years we have seen a growing awareness and concern with Internet freedom and privacy, fuelled by Edward Snowden’s revelations of the vast U.S.