Main Gallery

Chilean Kiss-In
Practitioner:
Chilean students
Date:
Jul 6 2011
Chile Students Stage Kissing Protest Ricardo de la Pena, UPI.com
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TikTok's teen communists are reclaiming the hammer and sickle
Practitioner:
TikTok's Gen Z Users
Date:
Feb 11 2021
20-year-old Ilyssa, from New York, sees communism as the only viable alternative, one that will improve the societal issues we currently face. “From a young age, I was very aware of the stark class differences that existed,” she says. “I grew up with a single mother in a very poor family.
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Barbie Liberation Organization
Practitioner:
Barbie Liberation Organization
Date:
Dec 25 1993
On Christmas day in 1993, kids were finding more than they bargained for under their trees: Mattel’s new talking Barbie dolls growled “Dead men tell no lies,” while Hasbro’s macho GI Joe’s chirped “I love to shop with you.”
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Putting a Trans Mark on the City of Berlin
Practitioner:
TGEU and international trans activist collective
Date:
Oct 12 2015
As part of an international workshop (10-11 October 2015) with the Center for Artistic Activism, 17 trans activists and artists from 13 European countries developed a creative campaign to mark some of the spaces in Berlin which have symbolic significance for trans people.
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Climate Comedy: Inspiring Climate Action Through Comedy
Practitioner:
Generation180
Date:
Jan 1 2024
The Climate Comedy Cohort is an unprecedented network of comedians who are coming together to learn, collaborate, and create hilarious new comedy informed by the hottest climate science. The Climate Comedy Cohort functions as a 9-month fellowship.
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Pimp My Carroça
Practitioner:
The Pimp My Carroça Project, Mundano
Date:
Jun 10 2012
With the intention of recognizing the work of the Latin American carreteros (garbage pickers) that collect recyclable materials in wheel carts, and increase environmental consciousness, artist Mundano created “Pimp My Carroça"
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AIDS Memorial Quilt
Practitioner:
Cleve Jones
Date:
Nov 1 1985
In June of 1987, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the disease.
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Brain Work: A Meditation on the Painting of Katherine Sherwood
Practitioner:
Georgina Kleege
Date:
Jan 1 2008
Brain Work: A Meditation on the Painting of Katherine Sherwood by Georgina Kleege
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Philando Castile: remembering his life through the power of art
Practitioner:
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Date:
Jun 28 2018
It all started a few months ago, when the Minneapolis Institute of Art got a phone call from Valerie Castile. Castile is the mother of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old black man who was shot and killed by a police officer in 2016. Valerie Castile has since founded the Philando Castile Relief Foundation, which helps victims of gun violence.
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Tied and Tested: Miles Greenberg's 'Sebastian' and the Art of Endurance
Practitioner:
Miles Greenberg
Date:
Apr 24 2024
Miles Greenberg is a performance artist from Canada who specializes in time, endurance, and the human body. His art is often complicated and deep into the human experience, with physical endurance mixed into visual metaphors that create deep, profound statements of the human condition.
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#IHaveADream
Practitioner:
The Sanctuaries
Date:
Jan 19 2015
I really enjoy the events that we host at The Sanctuaries. They're well planned but not over-planned, so there's space to just be yourself. On Monday, January 19th, we held a wonderful event that celebrated the teachings and life of Martin Luther King, Jr. The turnout was strong!
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The Guerrilla Girls: 'We upend the art world's notion of what's good and what's right'
Practitioner:
Guerilla Girls
Date:
Jan 1 1985
In 1984, a group of women in New York gathered outside the Museum of Modern Art as part of a protest. A group show, An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, was showing 165 artists, 152 male artists exhibited alongside just 13 women. Outraged, they attended the protest, bringing placards and chanting outside the museum. But a handful of women within the larger crowd learned something.
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Calle 13 brings its urban Latin sound and fiery politics to L.A.
Practitioner:
Calle 13
Date:
May 12 2012
By Juan Carlos Pérez-Duthie, Special to the Los Angeles Times 
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Detox Levis - Vertical Catwalk
Practitioner:
Greenpeace
Date:
Dec 6 2012
Detox Levi's: 6th December: Greenpeace activists staged a vertical catwalk action in front of the levi's store in the biggest mall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Greenpeace calls Levi's to engage fully in the process of ending the use and release of hazardous chemicals in connection with the production of their clothing.
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The Black Cinema House
Practitioner:
Theaster Gates
Date:
Oct 2 2013
Black Cinema House hosts screenings and discussions of films by and about people of the African diaspora, and offers video classes to neighborhood youth, teaching the next generation to make their own films and tell their own stories.
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Singalongs
Practitioner:
Dave Lippman, Raging Grannies, The Stop Shopping Choir, many more
Date:
Dec 12 2015
I have several theories about why song rewrites work well. Theory aside, people know the tunes and can learn the words. Scholars differ on whether you should make it as simple as possible or let the crowd be the artist by recognizing their ability to learn and perform something a bit tricky. Either way, it's great when songs are repurposed and people get to shout and sing instead of just chanting or listening to speeches.
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Kodaikanal Won't video: All you need to know about the Unilever mercury dumping case
Practitioner:
Chennai artist Sofia Ashraf
Date:
Jul 30 2015
The Kodaikanal Won't video by Chennai artist Sofia Ashraf, asking Unilver to 'clean up their mess' in connection with the Kodaikanal mercury dumping, has gone viral with over 783,533 views at the time of writing this, in just over two days. It has been shared on social media by prominent personalities such as Nandita Das, Varun Grover, Vishal Dadlani and was even praised by Nicki Minaj, on whose song Anaconda, the rap is based on.
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Mining the Museum
Practitioner:
Fred Wilson
Date:
Jan 19 1993
When Fred Wilson did an installation at the Maryland Historical Society in 1992, he shook up the museum world. Co-sponsored by the historical society and the Contemporary Museum, Mining the Museum did not involve artwork made by the artist; rather, it involved reinstalling items from the historical society's collection in such a way as to make us reconsider them.
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The Guerrilla Girls and the "HORROR ON THE NATIONAL MALL!"
Practitioner:
Guerrilla Girls
Date:
Apr 22 2007
“The Washington Post” asked the Guerrilla Girls to create a full page for their section on feminism and art, which was published on April 22, 2007. The Guerrilla Girls’ page contains an image of a fake tabloid, called “NOT OK! The Guerrilla Girls’ Scandal Rag,”. The tabloid’s cover features a sensational headline and some statistics, which highlight the fact that national museums rarely feature female artists and artists of color.
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Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia’s The Couple in the Cage: Guatinaui Odyssey
Practitioner:
Coco Fusco and MoMA
Date:
Jan 1 1993
The Couple in the Cage documents the travelling performance of Guillermo Gómez -Peña and Coco Fusco, in which they exhibited themselves as caged Amerindians from an imaginary island. While the artists’ intent was to create a satirical commentary on the notion of discovery, they soon realized that many of their viewers believed the fiction, and thought the artists were real “savages”.
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