Two pairs of dusty, pastel-orange roller skates. A ram's skull. Several meters of tangled, bright red rope. They aren't the sort of items you'd find in the great fashion houses of Europe or on North American catwalks.
But, for unconventional Chinese designer and performance artist Wan Yunfeng, they are perfect.
From his small apartment in eastern Beijing, Wan makes fashion that only he wears.
Through their podcast, The Dance Union, Melanie Greene and J. Bouey have been confronting racism in the dance world, and highlighting the experiences of Black artists, since 2018. Their episodes cover a variety of topics and issues, ranging from mental health and sexual harassment to advocating for fair pay.
The Immigrant Yarn Project (IYP), organized and created by Cindy Weil was a massive work of public and democratic (crowd-sourced), yarn-based art honoring our immigrant heritage and promoting tolerance, difference, and community. Weil reached out across the state and beyond to collect yarn-based creations by immigrants and their descendants.
During the economic crisis of 2008, bankers in Spain took advantage of the economically disadvantaged, and the artwork La Fiera en Sevilla, or the Wild Animal in Sevilla in English, brings attention to this money-centric act from the bankers. La Fiera refers to the bankers at the time that used predatory methods in their actions to forcibly evict poor people from their houses.
Mural artists add color and flavor on 800 South in the Granary District of downtown Salt Lake City. There’s an old-fashioned bar on the side of a locally-owned brewery, and a Southern Utah landscape on another building. Down the street, on the south corner of 800 South and 300 West, there’s a new mural that’s far more potent.
Djerbahood Project, which took place during the months of July and August on a small island called Djerba and is located in the Gulf of Gabes. Better known as the island of dreams, the tiny village of Djerba boasts a traditional and authentic Tunisian setting which acted as a blank canvas for hundred and fifty street artists from thirty different countries.
Artist: Félix González-Torres
Media: Candies in variously coloured wrappers, endless supply, ideal weight of 175 lb
Date & Location: 1991
Where can I find this item?: Art Institute of Chicago, Contemporary Art, Gallery 293
Source: Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons)
Following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, corporations jumped on the opportunity to commodify the Black Lives Matter movement. In June of 2020, Netflix launched a Black Lives Matter collection, and by December, they had released Cops and Robbers, an animated short about racial injustice.
In this article, author Caroline Choi highlights different grafiti artists and their stories. These artists use their talent to tell their stories, ones that might not get to be told otherwise. She goes into the history of grafiti, and how it ties into how rich and white the art world has become.
The AIDS pandemic began in the early 1980s and brought with it a surge of emotions from the public: they were afraid, angry, fearful and defiant. The arrival of AIDS also brought with it a condemnation of the LGBT community. These emotions, along with the view on the LGBT community, paved the way for a new generation of artists.
A new piece of art by Banksy was unveiled in London on Monday in a protest targeting one of the world's largest arms fairs. The work will be displayed for a week at Art the Arms Fair, an exhibition set up to oppose the Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) exhibition being held in the British capital this week.
"SOA Cycle, and what it later became, which is called the Democracy Cycle, is a group of seven large works that approach the question of democracy. What is democracy? How is it constructed? How is it implemented? Is it something that is to be thought of in relation to its political influence? Or is it something that plays out in terms of cultural and social, and even emotional terms, for instance?
On Sunday, September 16th at around 1am, a white van—labelled with “Van Wagner’s” blue logo and topped by a yellow strobe light—circled through permanently lit Times Square. Inside the vehicle, the driver and passenger, both dressed as construction workers, were nervous. They had just vandalized one kiosk a few yards away from an NYPD tower, now they were about to hit another one right underneath the nose of a large white NYPD security camera.
HOT ART EXHIBITION — is a series of visualizations following the question: What would happen if there would be no air conditioner during an extremely hot summer? This might be the result.
Will Work for Empty Wallets is a community outreach project dedicated to the millions of unemployed United States Citizens. Over 3,000 empty wallets were collected nationwide with the help of the Georgia Department of Labor to construct an 11'x21' American flag. Over 1200 wallets were used in the construction; each containing a unique empty wallet story about economic hardships.
The Georgian government’s attempt in March to impose a repressive Russian-style “foreign agent” law has galvanised the cultural community in the country. Museum workers and artists have been at the forefront of dramatic protests during which police fired water cannons at crowds waving European Union flags, and say they plan to continue the battle despite the government backing down from the legislation.
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.
In El Paso more than 100 murals have been painted since the mid-1960s. The murals, located throughout the city's various corridors, often depict themes common to Chicano muralism, such as mestizo heritage or social problems, but they also tell unique stories about the "merging of ideas, cultures, and dreams" along the United States-Mexico border.
Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, established their collaborative named Birdhead in 2004. Both natives of Shanghai, their work is deeply rooted in their hometown and its evolution amid China’s growth into a global power. The duo takes diaristic snapshots, highlighting their everyday lives in the quickly changing city.
With past government shut downs and teetering the fiscal cliff, debt
ceiling now eliminated, credit line increase after credit line
increase? I thought my timely art piece may be interesting for your
viewers and spark healthy/heated discussion.
(Honoring our Origins, Ourselves and our Dreams) is an all-womyn and womyn-identified crew from the northeast San Fernando Valley dedicated to creating awareness through public art.
Asian Americans standing up for themselves, the Black Lives Matter movement, and their home: New York City
In 2020, as COVID-19 flared through New York City and NYC hospitals saw a spike of nearly 200,000 patients, Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) faced an added threat: blame, racism, and xenophobia.
The story of an artist. Laolu Senbanjo grew up surrounded by the culture and mythology of the Yoruba, an ethnic group from the southwest of Nigeria, but he never imagined how it would influence the artist he is today. After a career as a human rights attorney, Senbanjo moved to New York City to pursue art full time. “With my art, I like to tell stories, I like to start a conversation,” says Senbanjo, but life as an artist in New York was tough.
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."