Serene colors and technical set pieces create a surreal ambience as performers delicately hover into the black void above the stage. These performers belong to Kinetic Light, an "internationally-recognized disability arts ensemble". In 2022, the ensemble performed Wired, a "potent contemporary aerial dance performance that explores race, gender, and disability stories of barbed wire in the United States".
The Yes Men join Reclaim the City in their fight against unjust housing policy. On September 30, 2019, a horde of zombies attended a "#natsneverdie rally" at the Cape Town Civic Centre in order to celebrate Mayor Dan Plato and the Mayoral Committee and to support their policies, which are increasingly similar to those of the National Party under Apartheid.
World Microphone (世界麦克风) is an organization created by students (most of them are Chinese) located in London. The organization has an account in RED, which is a popular social media in China. It often holds interviews and movements on the street in London, talking about world culture, food, and travel. Then, it makes short videos based on these interviews and movements and posts the videos on RED.
Inspired by the Laughing Farmers of Karnataka, protesters in New York make Carlos Slim's visit to New York uncomfortable while he appears on a "Live From NYPL" program. This excellent video summarizes the action.
Ladies’ Room, lasting fewer than six and a half minutes, offers a behind-the-scenes look at a women’s washroom in a nightclub located in a Beijing hotel. A male patron of Cui Xiuwen’s studio first took her there, and she acknowledges being drawn to the ladies’ room precisely because her host did not have access to it.
Gregg Segal -- a California-based artist who is known for using the medium of photography to explore culture with the "sensibility of a sociologist" -- asked family, friends, neighbors and other acquaintances to save their trash and recyclables for a week and then lie down and be photographed in it:
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.
Benjamin Von Wong’s latest art-as-activism installation looks like something Photoshopped onto reality. A large brass-looking faucet, suspended in the air, pours a river of plastic out of its spout.
In the early 1970s, Denmark was hit by the energy crisis sweeping the globe. A rise in the price of oil led by the nations of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) led to a global economic slow-down, especially in industrialised nations.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized erotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W.
Kwame Brathwaite, the photographer and activist whose work gave a visual identity to the “Black is Beautiful” movement, died on April 1. He was 85.
The news was shared by his son, Kwame Brathwaite, Jr., in an Instagram post. “I am deeply saddened to share that my Baba, the patriarch of our family, our rock and my hero has transitioned,” Brathwaite, Jr. wrote. “Thank you for your love and support during this difficult time.”
Máximas de Seguridad, a survival manual written and illustrated by Jhafis Quintero creates a new voice for the voiceless, vulnerable and underprivileged groups in prisons and creates empathy for those that are labeled as dangerous by society. The manual aims to provide empathy and humanity in light of the public scrutiny that ex-prisoners endure in the transition to social reintegration.
order Crossers comprise a series of lightweight robotic sculptures that poetically explore the notion of borders and boundary conditions. The inflatable sculptures rise up to several stories high and extend across a given threshold. Their choreographed performance, originating on both sides of the border, would stage a symbolic connection.
In 2016, photojournalist Gulnara Samoilova was running a successful wedding photography business. Her diverse portfolio of work spans two decades — with images in the permanent collections of The New York Public Library, 9/11 Memorial Museum and Houston Museum of Fine Arts — but weddings had become her staple business. By the year's end, she'd decided to pack it in.
Activists gate-crashed a retirement dinner for outgoing HMRC boss Dave Hartnett in Oxford, presenting him with flowers and a fake award for allowing large companies to avoid paying tax.
Keith Haring is known to be one of the biggest artists raising awareness for HIV and AIDS, considering he had also passed away from HIV. Starting his career covering ads with spray paint and chalk in subway stations in New York City, his work started trending and he became an activist for this cause.
In 1998 Portuguese born artist Paula Rego created a series of work entitled Untitled. The Abortion Pastels. Rego created her work in response to a referendum to legalise abortion in Portugal, which was very narrowly defeated. Each canvas depicted the image of a woman undergoing an unsafe abortion. When the series was exhibited in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Rego recalled the whispered secrets of women in the gallery while looking at her artworks.
It was September 1738, and Benjamin Lay had walked 20 miles, subsisting on “acorns and peaches,” to reach the Quakers’ Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Beneath his overcoat he wore a military uniform and a sword — both anathema to Quaker teachings. He also carried a hollowed-out book with a secret compartment, into which he had tucked a tied-off animal bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice.
Gao Yaojie (Chinese: 高耀潔, Gao Yaojie; 19 December 1927 – 10 December 2023) was a Chinese gynecologist, academic, and AIDS activist based in Zhengzhou, Henan, China. Gao was honoured for her work by the United Nations and Western organizations whilst spending time under house arrest.
Drama Queens Ghana's “MoonGirls” is an Afrofuturistic graphic novel series. Through an Afrofuturistic lens, “MoonGirls follows the adventures of 4 African "supersheroes" with varying superpowers to save the world from a diverse range of forces; from patriarchy, rape culture to pollution and global warming.
Indigenous designers often use fashion to celebrate their culture and raise awareness around key issues affecting their community. Now, the spirit has come to the modeling world. Haatepah Clearbear is a full-time model, based in Los Angeles, who is using his platform to uplift his people. The 22-year-old’s personal Instagram page serves as a hub for his activism work, where he highlights everything from climate change to indigenous rights.
Sari Red (1988), by Pratibha Parmar, is a visual poem. Made in memory of Kalbinder Kaur Hayre, a young Indian woman killed in 1985 in a racist attack in England, Sari Red eloquently examines the effect of the ever-present threat of violence upon the lives of Asian women in both private and public spheres.
The New Culture Movement was initiated by Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, Qian Xuan and other writers who had received Western education (called the new-style education at the time). It is an ideological and cultural innovation and literary revolutionary movement.
Through their podcast, The Dance Union, Melanie Greene and J. Bouey have been confronting racism in the dance world, and highlighting the experiences of Black artists, since 2018. Their episodes cover a variety of topics and issues, ranging from mental health and sexual harassment to advocating for fair pay.