Projects tagged "Arts & Culture"

Heritage loss and the Importance of the Past
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Jan 1 1995
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) by Ai Weiwei is a highly provocative work of art. This series of three black and white photographs portray the artist holding a 2,000-year-old Han dynasty urn that, frame by frame, he drops, it falls, and shatters. As much a work of photography as a work of performance art, in each still an unaffected Ai looks directly at the camera aware of his destructiveness.
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Social change through music
Practitioner:
Jose Antonio Abreu
Date:
Jan 1 1975
El Sistema, also known as The National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestra and Choir, was established in Venezuela in 1975 by José Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan educator, musician and activist. The music education program operates within the voluntary sector and is funded publicly.
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Female Immigrants and Related Artwork
Practitioner:
Salma Zulfiqar
Date:
Jan 1 2019
As massacres, civil wars, and violence permeated communities, people have searched for asylum in other countries. Due to its location and relative safety, Spain has become a common destination for immigrants seeking a better life. Female immigrants in particular tend to experience much more arduous journeys in that they frequently are subjugated to sexual abuse.
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‘Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues’ Review: In His Own Words
Practitioner:
Louis Armstrong
Date:
Feb 13 2023
In Louis Armstrong’s study in the Queens home he shared with his fourth wife, Lucille, bookshelves were filled with reel-to-reel recordings he made as a sort of audio diary. Those tapes and his letters — read by the rapper Nas — lay the foundation for the director Sacha Jenkins’s documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.”
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The Vivienne Foundation
Practitioner:
Vivienne Westwood
Date:
Dec 15 2022
The Vivienne Foundation exists to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Vivienne's creativity and activism. Since the start of her career in the 1970s, Vivienne was renowned not only for her fashion design, but also her activism. Vivienne always utilised her platform of prestige to make the world a better place.
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Transient Typewrite Project
Practitioner:
Melrose Poetry Bureau
Date:
May 13 2015
Founded by Bobby Gordon and Nayeli Adorador Knudsen, The Melrose Poetry Bureau is a public intervention involving a whole lot of typewriters, a public space, and the chaos that ensues. Once a location is picked for an intervention, Bobby and Nayeli pack up their collection of old and new, sleek and saggy typewriters and transport them to that place. They set up tables, distribute the typewriters, and invite people to come write poetry.
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The Invisible Man
Practitioner:
Liu Bolin
Date:
Jan 1 2005
“My intention was not to disappear in the environment but instead to let the environment take possession of me” Said Liu Bolin. With his strong photography, Bolin vanishes into the city, creating a powerful statement about our relationship, as humans, to our surroundings.
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Ricardo Levins Morales – Art for Environmental Justice
Practitioner:
Morales
Date:
Apr 27 2025
Based in Minnesota, Morales creates prints and posters that address environmental and social justice issues. His art is used in grassroots movements, combining vivid imagery with messages of resistance and hope.
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Artist Rufina Bazlova uses embroidery as a form of ‘gentle protest’
Practitioner:
Rufina Bazlova
Date:
Jan 1 2020
Rufina Bazlova is not afraid to surrender her art to activism. Born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic ruled by the authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko for 29 years now, Bazlova knows all too well that being apolitical is a privilege many Eastern Europeans cannot afford. 2020 was a pivotal year for Belarus, not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic but also the presidential elections, which declared Lukashenko president for the sixth time.
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La Casa Invisible Protests Against Gentrification
Practitioner:
La Casa Invisible
Date:
Dec 3 2002
La Casa Invisible project was started in 2007 in Malaga, Spain, when a group of socially involved participants squatted in a run-down building, aiming to eventually claim the legal rights to the property (Moor & Smart, 2016). The space was opened to local artists and creators, quickly becoming a hub for free local music, performances, and seminars as well as creating an important meeting space for social groups (Moor & Smart, 2016).
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Kozaburo contemplates Japan’s spiritual history for AW21
Practitioner:
Kozaburo Akasaka
Date:
Mar 22 2021
In the four years since launching his eponymous label, Kozaburo Akasaka has established himself as a leader of New York’s new guard of fashion designers. In 2017, just months after graduating from Parsons’ prestigious Fashion MFA programme, his tailored silhouettes -- knife-sharp and steeped in retrofuturistic grunge -- earned him the LVMH Special Prize.
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Stitching Solitude: Bea Camacho's 'Enclose' and the Art of Isolation
Practitioner:
Bea Camacho
Date:
Jan 1 2005
Bea Camacho is a visual and performance artist from the Philippines, the provocation of whose work is described as exciting and strikingly into identity, intimacy, and isolation. Her art is known to delve into the human complex of experiences and offer a layered narrative within its visual and performance medium.
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What to do with a statue of Christopher Columbus?
Practitioner:
Tatzu Nishi
Date:
Sep 12 2012
“Discovering Columbus,” by the Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi. Nishi built a living room around the sculpture in Columbus Circle in New York City. The living room is mounted on scaffolding and turns the sculpture into a domestic center-piece.
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Bristol Activists Use Street Art to Fight Gentrification
Practitioner:
The People's Republic of Stokes Croft
Date:
Feb 8 2016
The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft is using street art to preserve the identity of Bristol’s most culturally diverse neighbourhood.
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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.
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3
'Orheim, Light of Life' exhibition with three generations
Practitioner:
Seungkyoo Han; Lee Woon-sik, Lee Sunkyeong, and Han Junkyu
Date:
May 28 2023
[Translated by Google translator]
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1
Social Reintegration of Prisoners in Spain
Practitioner:
Jhafis Quintero
Date:
Oct 5 2006
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.
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Beirut Graffiti Artist Uses His Murals to Unite A Fragmented City
Practitioner:
Yazan Halwani
Date:
Jan 1 2011
Yazan Halwani is a young Beiruti artist who paints murals of revered Lebanese and Arab figures on prominent walls in a bid to help overcome sectarianism in this fragmented city. “What I try to do,” he explains down a fuzzy line from Beirut, “is write the stories of the city, on its own walls – creating a memory for the city.”
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The Most Shocking Image I Can Remember Is Seeing Myself in the Mirror
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Apr 3 2011
It can be important to reflect on the artistic recounts of activists experiences under state imprisonment. In a revealing interview with Artspace, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei reflects on his 81-day secret detention in 2011 and the psychological strategies used to dismantle identity and autonomy.
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Fighting Violence with Art
Practitioner:
Sam Ryu, Ethan Regan
Date:
Dec 11 2023
One of the oldest forms of human expression is art, so it’s no surprise that art is constantly used to critique another of humanity’s oldest practices, violence and war. In the world of art activism, the power of creativity and innovation has been used to create commentary about war since the beginning of time. Art that speaks out against the atrocities of violent conflict embodies empathy, care, and a plethora of other human emotions.
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Watermelon Sunday - 100% Plant Based Cookout
Practitioner:
Watermelon Sunday
Date:
Jun 11 2019
Starting in 2019 out of the East Harlem neighborhood in New York, Watermelon has served as recurring series of cookout-themed events that are 100% vegan, while also centering BIPOC businesses. People from all over the city come to the reoccurring events to enjoy different vegan recipes and learn about different aspects of the vegan lifestyle and activism. Brands and organizations are welcome to participate upon coordination with the organizers.
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The story behind the strange 8th Ave. subway statues and the cartoons that inspired them
Practitioner:
Tom Otterness
Date:
Apr 17 2004
At the Eighth Avenue subway station, sewer alligators are not an urban legend. Anyone who’s been through the 14th St./Eighth Ave. station has probably seen the bronze gator sculpture — and probably wondered what it means and why it’s there. The underground gators — along with dozens of other whimsical creatures — are part of the permanent art installation housed at the intersection of the A,C,E, and L lines.
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4
The Whole World Is An Art School
Practitioner:
Bob and Roberta Smith
Date:
Feb 13 2018
Bob and Roberta Smith has been at the forefront of activist art for 2 decades; so who better to ask about how art is responding to these politically bleak times?
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As the Taliban Curbs Women’s Rights, Advocates Demand Action
Practitioner:
Afghan women walk along a road in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 29, 2022.
Date:
Feb 15 2023
In December – as many around the globe were preparing for the holidays – Sama, a former attorney, remained hunkered down in her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to comprehend how her world had changed.
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3
‘They’ve taken away my freedom’: the truth about the UK state’s crackdown on ​protesters
Practitioner:
Natasha Walter
Date:
Feb 5 2023
Melissa is a down-to-earth, friendly woman in her 50s, and it seems that she has always met life with a certain amount of courage. She grew up on another continent, and after early motherhood, then divorce and a first career in business, she moved to the UK with her second husband. She then built another career working with survivors of domestic violence, before setting up a climate emergency centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
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