Projects tagged "Activates (people)"

Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Visual Sovereignty: Unpacking Nicholas Galanin’s 'Never Forget' Installation
Practitioner:
Nicholas Galanin
Date:
Mar 12 2021
For Nicholas Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist and musician, memory and land are inevitably entwined. The 45-foot letters of Never Forget reference the Hollywood sign, which initially spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND and was erected to promote a whites-only development.
Four Dead in Ohio
Practitioner:
Neil Young, Students at Kent State University
Date:
May 1 1970
“Tin Soldiers and Nixon’s Coming. We’re finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming. Four Dead in Ohio."
"The Little Match Girl" in Shanghai -"One Box of Matches to Warm a Child"
Practitioner:
Date:
Jan 26 2016
On January 12, 2016, Shanghai's temperature dropped to its lowest of the year. A little girl was seen selling matches in the cold wind on Bund street. The little girl, wearing a classic dress, wrapped in an ocher-red scarf and carrying a small bamboo basket full of matches, gave matches to passers-by.
HUMAN RIGHTS WALL IN PARIS: A MURAL IN TRIBUTE TO SIX CONTEMPORARY ACTIVISTS, OUR PHOTOS
Practitioner:
Mahn Kloix, Amnesty International in France
Date:
Sep 21 2023
Paris inaugurates its first fresco, on the Human Rights Wall, in tribute to six contemporary activists. To be discovered in the capital's 12th arrondissement, this XXL work of committed street art is by Mahn Kloix.
Partnership Exhibition with the Banneker-Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture
Practitioner:
Maryland Hall
Date:
Feb 27 2021
Maryland Hall, in partnership with the Banneker Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, invited Maryland-based Black artists, whose work encapsulates activism and social justice and using the creative process to educate their audiences about diversity, equity and inclusion to send proposals to take one of six 5 ft.
Reclaiming the Monument
Practitioner:
Black Lives Matter
Date:
Jul 28 2020
Text by Jessica Stewart - In Virginia, one artist is helping his community reclaim a controversial monument in the name of Black Lives Matter. The Robert E. Lee Monument now stands as the only remaining Confederate statue on Richmond's historic Monument Avenue. While litigation ties up the statue's removal, light projection artist Dustin Klein is using his art to change the meaning of this contentious monument.
Indigenous activists gather in Brazil to discuss future of the Amazon
Practitioner:
Brazilian Indigenous Activists and Environmentalists
Date:
Aug 6 2023
Thousands of Indigenous activists and environmentalists have converged in one of the Amazon’s biggest cities to voice their hopes and fears about the future of the world’s biggest rainforest. The Brazilian city of Belém will this week host a two-day conclave bringing together the presidents of eight Amazon nations including Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.
Chinese artist speaks out against zero-Covid policy by wearing 27 hazmat suits in Times Square
Practitioner:
Zhisheng Wu
Date:
Oct 18 2022
On Sunday morning, a puffy, Michelin Man-like figure trudged through Times Square in New York, panting from the exertion of trying to move while wearing 27 hazmat suits. Inside the white cocoon was Zhisheng Wu, a Chinese artist who staged the street performance to criticize China’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy.
Artists Tried to Activate Voters With Billboard Art. Did It Work?
Practitioner:
Hank Willis Thomas
Date:
Jan 13 2025
On Nov. 6, the day after the presidential election, the artist Hank Willis Thomas was at his studio in Brooklyn. His production assistants were poring over tables strewed with blobby red white and blue silk-screen prints of the words “Fragile/ Democracy / Handle With Care” in capital letters.
Disability Rights In The Woods
Practitioner:
Guerilla Crip
Date:
Mar 26 2026
Guerilla Crip performs disability rights poetry in her local woods to protest about the persecution, discrimination and oppression that disabled people in the UK have endured since 2010 in the UK. We are being impoverished, demonised and targeted in society and by successive governments. Enough is enough!
Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Suicide Intervention Program
Practitioner:
Artist Qiu Zhijie
Date:
Jul 8 2008
The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, completed in 1968, is one of China’s most iconic infrastructural projects and a potent symbol of national pride. Spanning over 6,700 meters across the Yangtze River, it was the first double-decked road-rail truss bridge designed and built entirely by Chinese engineers, without foreign assistance, during a time of intense geopolitical isolation.
A Fire in My Belly (A work in progress)
Practitioner:
David Wojnarowicz
Date:
Jan 1 1986
"Owning a vehicle, you could drive by and with the pressure of your foot on the accelerator and with your eyes on the road you could pass it quickly … The images of poverty would lift and float and recede quickly like the gray shades of memory so that these images were in the past before you came upon them. It was the physical equivalent of the evening news.” — David Wojnarowicz.
The Sea of Escape
Practitioner:
Qiong Zhang
Date:
Nov 19 2022
"I collected 83 images of disappeared women from Chinese social media. I printed them out, cut them, organized them, and made them into a tarot deck called "Missing Persons Notice.'"
1,100 Body Bags Line National Mall For Action to Curb Gun Violence
Practitioner:
March for Our Lives
Date:
Mar 24 2022
Over 1100 black “body bags” fanned out over a section of grass on the National Mall in Washington D.C. on March 24 in a plea for sanity. Each represented roughly 150 individuals who have died from gun violence since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on Feb. 14, 2018 which left 17 people dead and 17 more injured – most of the victims in their teens.
The Condom on Jesse Helms' House
Practitioner:
ACT UP
Date:
Sep 5 1991
On September 5th, 1991, I put a giant condom over Jesse Helms’ house. Why? Because, as the condom said, “Helms is deadlier than a virus.” Senator Jesse Helms was one of the chief architects of AIDS-related stigma in the U.S. He fought against any federal spending on HIV research, treatment or prevention.
Montreal's 'casseroles' cook up a storm over Quebec's anti-protest law
Practitioner:
Casseroles
Date:
May 18 2012
"Every night, at 8pm, during 15 minutes, take a casserole or any object that makes some noise and bang it with all the wrath that Bill 78 inspires you!" Citizens in Quebec adopted 'cacerolazo,' a form of popular protest which consists of a group of people making noise by banging pots, pans, and other utensils in order to call for attention.
The powerful images of Hong Kong’s protests
Practitioner:
Hong kong residents
Date:
Jun 1 2019
The face of Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam is falling apart: an eyeball has fallen out of its socket and the flesh of her left chin has been ripped off. Black-clad protesters in yellow hard hats are standing on top of her head, hanging a banner with ‘Hong Kong add oil’ on her forehead and shouting into her ear with a megaphone.
The Tragic Story Behind Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"
Practitioner:
Billie Holiday
Date:
Apr 15 1937
In March 1939, a 23-year-old Billie Holiday walked up to the mic at West 4th's Cafe Society in New York City to sing her final song of the night. Per her request, the waiters stopped serving and the room went completely black, save for a spotlight on her face.
All Power to All People
Practitioner:
Hank Willis Thomas
Date:
Sep 1 2017
Located in Thomas Paine Plaza, across the street from City Hall, Hank Willis Thomas’s All Power to All People was a public art intervention that dealt with racial identity and representation in Philadelphia.
Artists React to the Pandemic, George Floyd and the Election
Practitioner:
Patricia Dahlman
Date:
Jul 3 2020
“Artists React to the Pandemic, George Floyd and the Election”
Singing to Disrupt Housing Auction
Practitioner:
Occupy Wall Street
Date:
Apr 17 2012
Demonstrators aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement sang their way into handcuffs during a Bronx foreclosure auction Monday to protest the housing crisis that continues to plague the borough. They serenaded a courtroom of real estate investors with the lyrics, "Y'all are speculating off people's pain. With all due respect, you should be ashamed."
Hunger King
Practitioner:
Jani Leinonen
Date:
May 6 2014
From Public Delivery: Located behind a resplendent Opera House in Budapest on the same road as Louis Vuitton sits Hunger King, a place that seems to be just like any other burger joint. However, it is anything but. Hunger King is a regular fast food outlet that is pushed onto the masses; Hunger King is a critical sociopolitical art installation that highlights Hungary’s significant crises of social inequality and homelessness .
For China’s Halloween of Discontent, He Went as a Surveillance Camera
Practitioner:
Wenxin Fan, Rachel Liang, Shen Lu, WSJ
Date:
Nov 1 2023
Several nights of Halloween celebration in Shanghai provided a vivid, if indirect, commentary this week on the malaise gripping the world’s second-largest economy.
Partnership Exhibition with the Banneker-Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture
Practitioner:
Maryland Hall
Date:
Feb 27 2021
Maryland Hall, in partnership with the Banneker Douglass Museum and Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture, invited Maryland-based Black artists, whose work encapsulates activism and social justice and using the creative process to educate their audiences about diversity, equity and inclusion to send proposals to take one of six 5 ft.
Dismaland
Practitioner:
Banksy
Date:
Aug 22 2015
In August 2015, Weston-Super-Mare - a sleepy seaside town in Somerset, England - suddenly became the top destination for the metropolitan elite, welcoming celebrity guests like Brad Pitt, Jack Black and Mark Ronson. Overnight this quaint town, just 18 miles from Bristol, was transformed by anonymous street artist Banksy when he opened his very own dystopian Disneyland style theme park called ‘Dismaland’.

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