Main Gallery

White Paper Revolution in Nanjing University of Communication
Practitioner:
Students from Nanjing University of Communication
Date:
Nov 26 2022
Direct Cause: The event that on November 24, several people died in a fire in a residential building in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, due to delayed disaster relief due to the COVID-19 lockdown policy in China, and the indifference of the government towards the incident and the block of message. Primary Cause: The three-year-long lockdown policy and the government’s excessive control over speech and thought led to social discontent.
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Monuments to Illegal Garbage
Practitioner:
CAC
Date:
Mar 15 2019
This urban action was consisted from mapping of over 50 locations of illegal garbage disposing sights and signing of 16 places across Macedonia where people dispose large amounts of heavy garbage and constructive waste.
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Detroit Industry, North Wall
Practitioner:
Diego Rivera
Date:
Jan 1 1933
Almost all of Rivera's art told a story, many of which depicted Mexican society, the Mexican Revolution, or reflected his own personal social and political beliefs, and In the Arsenal is no different. The woman on the right side of this painting in Tina Modotti, an Italian photographer and revolutionary political activist, who is holding ammunition for Julio Antonio Mella, a founder of the internationalized Cuban communist party.
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ABOLISH ICE
Practitioner:
Patricia Dahlman and Michael Dal Cerro
Date:
Apr 7 2026
The resistance to Trump’s ICE militia is strong and is documented in the online art exhibition, “ABOLISH ICE” https://sites.google.com/view/abolish-ice/home The participating artists-activists are from New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and California.
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"I'm Here: A Chilean initiative that makes visible street dogs
Practitioner:
Felipe Carrasco and Violeta Caro
Date:
Dec 23 2012
This is one of the noblest urban interventions I've seen lately. Two girls who go to a subway station in Santiago, Chile with lots of colorful balloons with helium. In the balloons write messages like "touch me", "hold me", "adopt me", "love me" or "feed me".
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It's OK to Say Gay
Practitioner:
Ok to Say Gay
Date:
Apr 27 2012
Missourians are fighting against legislation that would essentially make it legal to bully against LGBT students in the state’s schools. From the activists' site (http://oktosaygay.org/):
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Beyond AI WeiWei
Practitioner:
International Art Basel Fair
Date:
Mar 27 2015
In a gallery in Hong Kong’s Chai Wan district last week, during the city’s third annual installment of the international Art Basel fair, the Beijing-based artist Huang Rui introduced a new live work called “Red Black White Grey.” At the start of the performance, four affectless women walked onstage wearing trench coats, then disrobed one by one as Huang, who is sixty-three, slathered their bodies with black and then white paint.
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Reagan has died of AIDS
Practitioner:
Oliviero Toscani
Date:
Jan 15 1994
Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States on November 4, 1980. In less than a year, in the Summer of 1981, AIDS was first identified in medical journals. However, it took until 1987 before he would give his first major address on AIDS.
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GM Announces Climate Commitment
Practitioner:
Ailie Rutherford
Date:
Nov 29 2006
Concerned Citizens impersonated LA Autoshow hosts, interrupting a keynote speech from the General Motors' CEO. They present a pledge on behalf of GM, committing in writing to becoming an leader in fuel efficiency, and to follow through on all the environmental rhetoric promised in speech. The real CEO refuses.
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Singing Disrupts Oil Auction
Practitioner:
Feminist Economics
Date:
Feb 22 2016
Utah environmentalists infiltrated a federal oil-and-gas lease auction and refused to stop singing until they were escorted out.
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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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Vivienne Westwood: Fashion and Activism
Practitioner:
Vivienne Westwood
Date:
Jan 1 1971
Vivienne Westwood began designing in 1971 along with her then partner Malcolm McLaren in London. At the time, they used their shop at 430 Kings Road, London, to showcase their ideas and designs. With their changing ideas of fashion came the change of not only the name of the shop but also the décor. It was in 1976 when Westwood and McLaren defined the street culture of Punk with Seditionaries.
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LGBT Activists Hijack McDonalds’ Hashtag and Create a Parody #CheersToSochi Website to Raise Awareness about Russia’s anti-LGBT Laws
Practitioner:
Scott Wooledge
Date:
Feb 6 2014
On January 21, 2014, McDonald’s asked its customers to tweet supportive messages to the Olympians who would compete in the Sochi Games, along with the hashtag #CheersToSochi. However, within a couple of days, LGBT activists essentially hijacked the hasthtag from McDonalds.
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Capitol Lawn Covered in 7,000 Pairs of Shoes
Practitioner:
avaaz
Date:
Mar 13 2018
Protesters left 7,000 pairs of shoes in front of the Capitol building Tuesday to symbolize the number of children killed by gun violence in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012. From 8:30 am to 2 pm, the shoes were displayed on the southeast lawn in the hope of sending a clear message to Congress: Reform gun control legislation or more children will be killed by gun violence.
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Three months after the tragedy in Uvalde, families cope with art, activism and aspirations
Practitioner:
Ruben Esquivel
Date:
Sep 10 2022
Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio was looking forward to playing volleyball when she got to junior high. She dreamed of going to law school one day, and she loved astrology, butterflies, and the color yellow.
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Thousands of Shoes Honor Hurricane Maria’s Victims in San Juan
Practitioner:
Rafael Acevedo, Puerto Rican citizens
Date:
Jun 1 2018
Walking the rows of shoes—favorite slippers, old Army boots, gold stilettos—it’s the baby shoes that stop you cold. Shoes began to fill a plaza opposite Puerto Rico’s Capitol building, and by Sunday morning, there were more than 3,000 pairs, a growing memorial to the roughly 4,645 people estimated to have died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
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A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday
Practitioner:
Dread Scott
Date:
Jan 1 2015
In 2015, Walter Scott fled for his life, stalked by a policeman who then cold bloodedly shot him in the back. We all saw the video and in response to this murder I made the artwork, “A Man Was Lynched by Police Yesterday.” This simple banner, printed with the eponymous words, is an update of an iconic flag that the NAACP flew from their national headquarters window in New York in the nineteen-twenties and thirties the day after someone was lynched.
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Brazil’s Most Famous Art Movement Built on Racial Inequality
Practitioner:
various
Date:
Mar 13 2018
The Shifting View on Anthropofagia Tarsila is closely associated with the establishment of the Brazilian art movement known as cultural “cannibalism,” or “Anthropofagia”: the then-radical idea that a truly Brazilian art would emerge by ingesting all the different cultures that intermingled within the country, rather than simply copying European styles.
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FOKAL
Practitioner:
UNESCO, the French Institute, Fondation Culture Création, and Africamérica
Date:
Apr 1 1995
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.
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Gerrymander 5K run and walk
Practitioner:
J.P. & Cinnamon Kennedy
Date:
Nov 4 2017
Runners and walkers planning to take part in a 5K race in Asheville early next month might do better with a compass — a well-tuned political compass, that is.
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