In Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.”
On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral.
Last month, Birds Aren’t Real adherents even protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.
“So dramatic, so strong, so visual,” artist Stéphan Gladieu said of his first encounter with the revival of an ancestral folk art movement in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa is the capital of Congo but also one of the many places American and European countries send their waste.
Whose Utopia? is a color film which is 19 minutes 58 seconds long. It was originally commissioned by the Siemens Arts Program back in 2005. The projector-style video is based on the work and social lives of assembly line workers at OSRAM’s light bulb factory in the Pearl River Delta in China. This area has received huge numbers of immigrants from inland provinces seeking work and better lives in the wake of Beijing’s booming economy.
Ghana ThinkTank is an international collective that “develops the first world” by flipping traditional power dynamics, asking the “third world” to intervene into the lives of the people living in the so-called “developed” world.
From a distance they look like supermarket promotion ads, but up close, the text says the reverse: it details the skyrocketing food prices.
This is the proposal of the action “Bolsocaro”, which spread posters (those known as lambe-lambes) by walls in different regions of the São Paulo capital accompanied by phrases such as “It’s very expensive”, “It’s in Bolsonaro’s account” and “This account it is not ours.
Sitting at a folding table in the basement of Trinity Episcopal Church in downtown Columbus, Monica Jacobo used a felt tip marker to write the words “No means no!” on a white bandana.
Forensic Architecture's Cloud Studies is a project that investigates the impact of toxic clouds on colonised and oppressed communities. The clouds, originating from sources like tear gas, industrial emissions, chemical weapons, and forest fires, often go unaddressed due to doubt and denialism.
The Xuzhou chained woman incident, also known as the Xuzhou eight-child mother incident, is a case of human trafficking, false imprisonment, sexual assault, severe mistreatment, and subsequent events that came to light in late January 2022 in Xuzhou's Feng County, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
s street protests against anti-black racism erupted across the globe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons players were taking their own stand. Adelle, a software engineer from New York, decided to create a memorial on her in-game island, decorated with flowers and pixel art portraits of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other black victims of police brutality.
On July 2nd, 2013, after attending the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) conference, Bolivian President Evo Morales departed Russia from Vnukovo Airport in Moscow aboard his presidential plane. However, a "leak" suggested that Edward Snowden was aboard, which led Spain, France, and Portugal to close their airspace to the aircraft, to then be grounded in Austria.
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.
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.
The work of a radical theater and puppetry collective, known as Papel Machete, produces and performs throughout Puerto Rico and the United States. Papel Machete was established on May 1, 2006 during protests responding to the government shutdown and political and economic crisis prompted by Puerto Rico’s status as a United States colony.
Most nights since a coup returned Myanmar to military rule on Feb. 1, a spectral symbol of protest has glowed on a mildewed side of a building.
Where the next illumination will appear in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, is a mystery. But, suddenly, a projected image appears in the dark. Three fingers raised in a rebellious pose. A dove of peace. The smiling face of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose government was ousted in the army putsch.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. —
Supporters of the LGBTQ+ and arts communities in West Palm Beach are protesting the closure of two popular spots for creatives in the city.
In 1978, while studying print-making in Hamburg, Gavin Jantjes was deemed a persona non grata by South Africa. His crime? Creating a series of prints that documented the violence and discrimination in the apartheid state, which he gathered together under the tongue-in-cheek name of a "colouring book".
Private Dinner Party: Clothing Not Allowed
The Füde Dinner Experience gathers those who want to meet, eat and drink — only after leaving their clothes at the door.
A feminist group in France has been transforming the streets of Paris after noting that just 2.6 per cent are named after notable women.
Tourists on the Ile de la Cité got a surprise when they found that almost all of the street signs in central Paris had been changed overnight.
Carlos Hernández Chávez is a Mexican-American muralist who brings the spirit of 20th-century Mexican muralism into modern New England. Chávez’s murals address key social justice themes, including immigration, workers’ rights, and cultural identity, challenging viewers to acknowledge and reflect on pressing societal issues.
Presaged by shimmering spin-off hits “Dreams” and “Linger,” The Cranberries’ landmark debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, suggested its creators had taken up the baton handed down by jangly indie-pop classicists The Smiths and The Sundays.
Troy, Michigan couldn't afford to keep its library open, so it scheduled a vote for a tax increase. A strong anti-tax group waged a dominating campaign against it. Posing as a political group, an outside advertising agency posted signs around town that said, "Vote to close Troy library Aug 2, book burning party Aug 5." We invited everyone to our Facebook page, adding Twitter, Foursquare, want ads, flyers and more to drive engagement.
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
FEMEN is an organization that is revolutionizing the feminist movement. Founded in Ukraine in 2008 and adopted in Spain in 2013, FEMEN protests gender-based issues such as inequalities, violence, patriarchy, etc. Since its creation, it has spread to several other countries, and there have been hundreds of organized protests.
Kurokawa Cup is a protest against former head Tokyo prosecutor Hiromu Kurokawa's de facto immunity after he had played mahjong for money, which is an illegal act in Japan.
The Beehive Design Collective is a wildly motivated, all-volunteer, activist arts collective dedicated to “cross-pollinating the grassroots” by creating collaborative, anti-copyright images for use as educational and organizing tools. We work as word-to-image translators of complex global stories, shared with us through conversations with affected communities.