Art & Activism 2016 Favorite 

“A Foreigner Makes Beijing’s Smog into Rings” has become a tittle used by a multitude of popular public accounts on Wechat, the most commonly used chatting app in China, which makes more and more Chinese netizens know the story of Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and “social designer”, who has been making effort to combine the energy saving technology with visually enjoyable art.

Activism through print media is often done through duplication: posters, flyers, magazines, manifestos. But with these media, each individual duplicate holds the same, political message.

In Felix Gonzalez-Torres's "Untitled" (Death by Gun) (1990), a stack of posters are placed in the gallery space for people to take with them. As the pile is depleted, more posters are printed.

If something is a total opposite to war, that is the practice of yoga. Concentrating or relaxing your muscles and mind in order to release tension, is something a soldier would never have the luxury to do under the dangerous circumstances of war.

Inventor Dan Abramson thought of a amazingly creative and beautiful way to connect the two, by creating “Yoga Joes”, a series of simple green plastic army men that have some killer… yoga moves.

Julie Dillon is a critically acclaimed illustrator, having been nominated and won multiple awards, including two Hugos and a Chesley. Her work often deals with science fiction and fantasy stories, and her work in the field has made her aware of the lack of diversity in this optimistic speculative fiction.

After a spate of bullying-related suicides of LGBT youth, gay columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller decided to launch the It Gets Better project to see what they could do about it. They began with a simple YouTube video in which both of them described their experiences with bullying in high school, coming out, their families, and the story of their relationship and the adoption of their sun.