On May 14, 2022, the Buffalo community suffered a devastating act of violence when a gunman opened fire at the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue, killing ten people and wounding three. Many have asked how to help.
In partnership with Tops, the National Compassion Fund has established the Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund to provide direct financial assistance to the survivors of the deceased and those directly affected by this tragedy.
ONGOING ORGANIZATION:
CALLED: Iranti [pronounced írantì] is the Yoruba word for ‘memory’. Largely found in South West Nigeria and parts of Benin Republic, the Yoruba people consider memory a prized form of intelligence which determines how often one remembers what they see and hear.
The frontier between the United States and Mexico is the busiest land border in the world. It is also among one of the world’s most heavily regulated and policed border zones—the arid climate of which is responsible for many migrant deaths each year.
IMAPCT are youth activists who view the creative arts and leadership training as a way to develop ourselves and change the world in a positive way. They believe that they must be the message that bring through hardwork, focus, discipline, unity and the principles of S.O.S. safe space, outstanding effort and service to their family friends and community.
Call it art, exhibited as an installation piece in the October 2014 show "Crossing Brooklyn," a collaboration of more than 100 artworks by 35 artists (or groups) who live or work in Brooklyn, presented at the Brooklyn Museum... or call it "A survey of Art from Brooklyn" as hyperallergic journalist Jillian Steinhauer wrote... it exists on the streets as a social practice, albeit using creative means for community-building.
In March of 2022, JR, with the help of 100 volunteers, unfurled the portrait of five-year-old, Ukrainian refugee Valeriia in Lviv, Ukraine. Leaving Ukraine, JR saw firsthand how difficult it was for women and children to get to safety due to long queues at the border. In response, he released two NFTs of Valeriia as part of his solidarity project titled: Can Art Change the War?
A toothless garbageman who once wandered Hong Kong’s streets with dingy bags of ink and brushes tied to his crutches is now the subject of a major retrospective. About 300 calligraphic works by the late Tsang Tsou-choi — who is best known by his self-dubbed title, the King of Kowloon — are showing at the ArtisTree art space in a high glass tower.
"a dinner cooked by six indigenous chefs, members of tribes from around North America, who are meeting together for the first time this week to launch a new indigenous activist group, called the I-Collective. Thursday’s dinner will be at Dimes, on Canal Street, and it will follow a dinner tonight for New York City’s local Native American community at the American Indian Community House, on Eldridge Street.
In 2007, anonymous French photographer JR embarked on the Face2Face project - the largest unauthorized photo exhibition ever conceived. JR and his collaborator Marco engaged Israelis and Palestinians employed in the same profession to be photographed making funny faces. They then enlarged the photos to grand proportions and wheat pasted juxtaposed portraits onto both sides of the security Separation Wall and in surrounding cities.
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.
Zhang Donghui, born in 1992, is a native of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China. He graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. He has been living and working as a professional artist in Beijing since then.
A village shop in Coniston is stocked by local producers with everything from farm meat and vegetables to paintings and knitted goods. The produce is all homemade and brought in by local suppliers. Customers are invited to buy goods in the shop for an 'honest' price, there are guideline price tags attached to the items by the producer but customers are expected to pay what they consider an honest, suitable price for the item.
New York performance artist Matthew Silver is at it again. In his most recent stunt he reminded people that self love can't be achieved through commodities. Chanting "You don't need stuff to love yourself" in his underwear at Columbus Circle he created a spectacle that attracted more and more people to his message.
The Colombian hip hop had an outstanding representation with the C15 group in the Fabrica of Rimas International Festival, a gathering of urban cultures, sponsored by Morocco, Colombia and Spain.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News:
The Democracy Machine! is a performative sculpture that gives participants the opportunity to experience the thrill of democracy in action, in a competitive game that challenges people to work together toward understanding a better society. Using the spectacle and play of performance drawn from Las Vegas Casinos, gambling machines and game shows, The Democracy Machine!
"The massive "Above and Beyond Memorial" will be installed at the National Veterans Art Museum, The Harold Washington Library, and go on display starting Feb. 20, culminating a painstaking search to find a suitable — although temporary — home for the 58,000 replica dog tags honoring those who died as a result of their service in the war that stretched from March 1965 to May 1975.
Walking the rows of shoes—favorite slippers, old Army boots, gold stilettos—it’s the baby shoes that stop you cold. Shoes began to fill a plaza opposite Puerto Rico’s Capitol building, and by Sunday morning, there were more than 3,000 pairs, a growing memorial to the roughly 4,645 people estimated to have died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians have protested across northern China in opposition to Beijing plans to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in some school subjects.
The purpose of this project was the permeate stock images with more depictions of Black people. Stock images are usually easily found and utilized, showcasing people doing everyday activities or scenes. To boost representation of Black people in this particular image field, were left out, so the artist chose to recreate popular stock images with Black models to showcase representation and shed light on the lack of diversity in these photos.
Room13Delmar is a tricycle-based mobile studio conceived as a sculpture: a cross between a vending tricycle and a ‘Mary Poppins’ bag that unfolds to create a space for creativity on the sidewalk, at a senior center and at a veterans medical center, north of Delmar in the city of St. Louis, Missouri.
Ron Krielen is a social designer and a taxi driver. He spent five years driving a taxi for elderly and disabled people. En route, he would get to know them and their individual situation. He realized that this kind of personal contact gave him a better insight into possible solutions than many of the healthcare providers who were actually assigned to each case.
Sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) used her art to advocate for social change in both the U.S. and her adopted country of Mexico. Much of her work focuses on the experience of African American life and political struggle during the middle of the 20th century. Her posters of well-known activists, including Angela Davis and Malcolm X, were widely circulated at the time.
After winning the TED Prize on March 2, 2011, the French-artist JR launched the Inside Out Project, in his first TED Talk. Using his own artistic practice as inspiration, this participatory platform helps individuals and communities to make a statement by displaying large-scale black and white portraits in public spaces. Through their “Actions,” communities around the world have sparked collaborations and conversations.