The streets of Santiago are once again alive with the spirit of revolution. For weeks now, working-class Chileans have occupied national monuments and blocked major intersections in protest of widespread inequality. They desire full reform — a request so long in the making that it is practically tradition. The country’s floundering political elite offer half measures while dispatching riot police and the military.
To show the harmful effects of cocaine on a drug addict, Brazilian advertising agency Talent created ‘living’ poster ads that are consumed by live mealworms over time.
Printed on dough, the ads initially show the faces of drug addicts.
However, as time passes, the mealworms slowly eat away at the posters, causing holes to form on the printed faces—highlighting the harmful effects of the drug.
Created by and for women, Broccoli is an independent print magazine based in Portland, Oregon. Although intended for cannabis users, Broccoli is an art and lifestyle magazine that bills itself as “playful, informed, eclectic, and thoughtful.” It encourages the discovery and appreciation of cannabis through explorations of art, culture, and fashion.
A big yellow banner hangs off the Central Methodist Church in Cape Town, South Africa proclaiming that *"Jesus was the first to decriminalise sex work - John 8:7"*
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
Play Smart a series of yearly events where photographers and designers are gathered and designed cards to trade. It has lasted from 2010 to this year. Play Smart 2010 is the first in the series. In 2010, Play Smart featured photographers Aaron Cobbett, inkedKenny, Greg Mitchell and Slava Mogutin and was designed by John Chaich.
Without having been commissioned—or even given legal permission at all—Haring set out to create Crack Is Wack on the wall of an abandoned handball court in a park at 2nd Avenue and East 128th Street on June 27, 1986. Upon the completion of the mural, Haring was arrested by the New York City Police Department for vandalism of city property and faced potential jail time in addition to heavy fines.
Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members, all artists - but action, not art, was the aim of the collective. Gran Fury member Loring McAlpin described the collective's mass-market ambition to “...fight for attention as hard as Coca-Cola fights for attention.”
One of the most critical artists on the contemporary art scene is Zhang Huan. His works are of great social insight and unique in how he applies his artistic expression. He thus makes them an almost visual feast with a peek into the multilevel structure of modern society. One such work is the masterpiece "Family Tree," which shows how art can mould our social cognition through multilayered symbolism and profound imagery.
Namo Nazi
Namo Nazi is a group which is dedicated to the cause of spreading awareness about fascism. They create anti-fascist T-Shirts and say this about themselves:
Based in Minnesota, Morales creates prints and posters that address environmental and social justice issues. His art is used in grassroots movements, combining vivid imagery with messages of resistance and hope.
In a massive act of ‘brand vandalism’ just two days before the launch of the UN COP21 Climate Conference, 600 anti-advertisement posters have been installed in outdoor media spaces throughout the streets of Paris. The posters display artwork from over 80 artists from 19 different countries, including big names such as Banksy-collaborator Paul Insect, Alex One, Know Hope, Escif, Cleon Peterson, Hyuro, Jimmy Cauty, Ron English and many others.
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.
Street artist, graphic designer, and activist Shepard Fairey created this visionary portrait of then Senator Barack Obama in 2008 as a form of grassroots activism to support Obama’s first presidential campaign. Fairey based the work on an Associated Press photograph by Mannie Garcia, which he transformed with his signature high-contrast stencil technique, inspired by the political message and bold graphics of Soviet Socialist Realism.
Racist adverts promoting hatred against Muslims are currently being run on buses in San Francisco - but someone has started covering them up with anti-hatred messages from Marvel's première Muslim superhero, Ms. Marvel.
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.
The group of students from NYU took to the streets of Manhattan to shout back against sexual harassment and bring awareness to the Everyday Sexism project. Armed with business cards that said "#shoutingback" on one side, and "Real men don't catcall" on the other side, the group waited for men to yell at the women while they walked down the street.
Flushing Creek is so hidden by industrial sites and highways, it’s almost invisible to those passing through the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. “I lived in Flushing my whole life and didn’t know that I lived near waterways until I was 20 years old,” Cody Ann Herrmann told Hyperallergic.
Counterspace is an independent curatorial platform functioning as the first decolonial thinktank mapping cultural activism worldwide. It shapes collectively decolonial toolkits with common tools and resources, and a global directory browsable by continent, praxis, and social construct, as a Beuys-inspired ‘social sculpture’ revisited, and an alternative map of the universe.
Hostile architecture—urban design features like ground spikes that deter the homeless from lying down or slanted benches that prevent lingering—inscribes exclusion into our streets. In response, a Chinese artist will launch the Free Butt Plug Catalogue, an art-activism project that documents fifteen such spikes and anti–loitering benches across London and pairs each with a commercially available butt plug of the same shape.
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?
From Time Magazine:
It's not a dress—it's a cape
We’ve all seen the woman in the triangle dress that marks women’s bathrooms. But what if that triangle silhouette isn’t really a dress?
It can be important to reflect on the artistic recounts of activists experiences under state imprisonment. In a revealing interview with Artspace, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei reflects on his 81-day secret detention in 2011 and the psychological strategies used to dismantle identity and autonomy.
Cut and Paint is a website with free access to a wide variety of visual designs that can be printed out, cut, and used as graffiti stencils anywhere. Access to a variety of resolutions of each design is free for all, and there is a standing invitation for artist-activists to contribute their own designs for others to use.