Projects tagged "Labor"

‘Memorial’
Practitioner:
Cherill Linnett and woman activists
Date:
Mar 8 2020
Cheril Linett is a female artist from Chile, with a background in performance art and stage performance, who primarily focuses her artwork on feminist issues in Chile, especially ones involving violence, murder, hate crime and different kinds of oppression and assault, but also creates artwork reflecting issues in other parts of Latin America.
May Day Occupation at Guggenheim
Practitioner:
Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction
Date:
May 1 2015
At noon today, a group of artists and activists including members of the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (known as G.U.L.F.) unfurled a large parachute in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, demanding to meet with a member of the institution’s board of trustees to discuss the labor conditions at its Abu Dhabi site.
LEGOVC
Practitioner:
iancooketal
Date:
Feb 22 2018
LEGOVC is a fictional, made up, 100% fake, plastic, 'pantomime villain' Vice Chancellor of a fake British University struggling as his utter managerial brilliance crumbles in the face of sustained strike action by his staff after their pension scheme is slashed.
Khalil Bandib: Cartoons that Speak Truth to Power
Practitioner:
Khalil Bandib
Date:
Jan 1 2007
Khalil Bandib is a Berkeley-based, award-winning editorial cartoonist with a unique perspective. He critiques a myriad of topics, from racism and homophobia to foreign policy and the Patriot Act. Bandib was born in North Africa under a French colonist regime; he brings a non-Eurocentric perspective not typically visible in large corporate media.
Naming the Lost Memorials
Practitioner:
Naming the Lost, Make the Road, CityLore, Great Small Works, Fund Excluded Workers coalition, artists around the country, folklorists around the country
Date:
May 25 2020
In May 2020, a team of artists, activists, folklorists, and people who lost loved ones to Covid-19 came together to make monthly memorial sites in New York City to remember victims of the Covid-19 pandemic. They continued installing memorials around New York City every month during the summer of 2020.
Rat Row
Practitioner:
Laborers Local 79
Date:
Jan 7 2025
A fat cat, a pig wearing a top hat and five rats. All seven inflatables faced the 34th Street entrance of the Empire State Building last Thursday, two weeks into a protest by members of Laborers Local 79 who rallied, hundreds strong, in the afternoon shadow of the props.
Maleteros
Practitioner:
Mark Bradford
Date:
Jan 1 2005
Malteros are the porters who transport luggage and goods between the border of the US and Mexico. Working with a group of maleteros in 2005, artist Mark Bradford collaborated on a system of maps and signs that placed the marginalized work of the unofficial maleteros alongside that of the sanctioned labor of policemen and taxi drivers.
Calling Me a Hero Only Makes You Feel Better
Practitioner:
Grocery Store Workers, Essential Workers, Front Line Workers
Date:
Apr 18 2020
Working in a grocery store has earned me and my co-workers a temporary status. After years of being overlooked, we suddenly feel a sense of responsibility, solidarity, and pride. On a private Facebook group page for my company, Trader Joe’s, one employee from Washington State posted a picture of a company-issued work shirt hanging from the ceiling of the store. A sign attached to the shirt read not all heroes wear scrubs.
A Haunting Artistic Tribute to Garment Workers Killed in Bangladesh and the US
Practitioner:
Artist Rachel Breen, Poet Alison Morse
Date:
Apr 1 2018
NORTHFIELD, Minn. — Exactly 1,281 white garments hang from the ceiling of the Perlman Teaching Museum’s Braucher Gallery. The collared shirts, knit sweaters, tights, and other items of clothing glow with an eerie luminosity.
Protest Posters for Fees Must Fall
Practitioner:
Burning Museum and Faith47
Date:
Oct 3 2015
Daniel Hewson describes the use of protest posters and the work of collective, Burning Museum, and artist, Faith47, in the Fees Must Fall movement taking place in South Africa:
Dismaland
Practitioner:
Banksy
Date:
Aug 20 2015
“He describes it as a “family theme park unsuitable for small children” – and with the Grim Reaper whooping it up on the dodgems and Cinderella horribly mangled in a pumpkin carriage crash, it is easy to see why. Banksy’s new show, Dismaland, which opened on Thursday on the Weston-super-Mare seafront, is sometimes hilarious, sometimes eye-opening and occasionally breathtakingly shocking.
The True Cost
Practitioner:
Andrew Morgan
Date:
Apr 24 2015
The True Cost is a 2015 documentary film directed by Andrew Morgan that focuses on fast fashion. It discusses several aspects of the garment industry from production—mainly exploring the life of low-wage workers in developing countries—to its after-effects such as river and soil pollution, pesticide contamination, disease and death.
Hong Kong Apple Store met with protest over supply chain violations on iPhone 6 launch day
Practitioner:
SACOM
Date:
Sep 3 2015
Apple implemented improved reservation procedures and policies for employees dealing with the iPhone 6 launch at retail stores on September 19th, 2014, but the launch at the company’s Hong Kong store hadn't gone quite as smooth as elsewhere. The store was hit by protesters from the Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) and also required police to help disperse customers that had waited in line without reservations.
We Do Care
Practitioner:
Allthosewalls
Date:
Dec 3 2016
‘MADE IN BANGLADESH’: NEWYORKERS RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT WORKER EXPLOITATION IN FASHION INDUSTRY New York City – Models are marching along the biggest shops in Fifth Avenue, wearing faux bloodied shirts with statements 'Made in Bangladesh’, ‘Support Cheap Labor.’ Myths about ethical consumption: ineffective, expensive and subordinate
Zhang Huan, To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond
Practitioner:
Zhuang Huan, some laborers, fishermen, construction workers
Date:
Sep 1 1997
Zhuang Huan invited more than 40 men - laborers, fishermen, construction workers––who had recently migrated to Beijing from other areas of China to participate. Zhang Huan said, “In order to find these workers, I visited many of the shacks where they live.”
Fake Air Force 1
Practitioner:
Putian shoe manufacturer
Date:
Apr 26 2021
Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) was registered in 2009 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is a non-profit international membership organization with representative offices in China, India, Pakistan, and London. It has more than 400 member organizations around the world, mainly including cotton growers, cotton textile enterprises, and retail brands. The group aims to promote what it calls "Better Cotton" around the world.
Horrible bosses: masked activists publicly shame businesses in Bologna
Practitioner:
Il Padrone di Merda
Date:
Oct 1 2019
On a warm summer afternoon in the Italian city of Bologna, a group of around 15 young people march through the crowded city centre to a high-end pastry shop in Strada Maggiore.
Can’t Help Myself
Practitioner:
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu
Date:
Dec 29 2016
In 2016, the Guggenheim Museum commissioned its very first robotic artwork called Can’t Help Myself (Wannmann, 2016). The artwork is created by two of China’s most controversial artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu and can be described as a robotic arm that has one specific, life-long duty: to prevent the deep-red, bloodlike liquid, which constantly oozes outwards, from straying too far (Weng, n.d.).
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).
Ivanka Vacuuming
Practitioner:
Jennifer Rubell
Date:
Feb 1 2019
From Public Delivery: "The art piece, which was showcased at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington D.C. from February 1 to 17, 2019, allowed visitors to interact with it. The audience had a pile of crumbs placed right in front of the three-walled setup, which they would through and watch as ‘Ivanka’ vacuumed them all up.
Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Oct 12 2010
Ai Weiwei's installation Sunflower Seeds is a profound commentary on both historical and contemporary issues through the medium of art. First exhibited at Tate Modern in London from October 12, 2010, to May 2, 2011, the work features an astonishing one hundred million handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds, spread across the gallery's 1,000 square meter Turbine Hall to a depth of ten centimeters.
The Hong Kong Artist Who Got Fired From McDonald’s
Practitioner:
Luke Ching
Date:
Feb 22 2025
On a recent eight-hour shift at a McDonald’s in Hong Kong, Luke Ching, 52, wiped tables, cleared trays of half-eaten fries, emptied cups of soda and milk tea and lugged bulging trash bags to the dumpster. For him, the main goal of the part-time work was not making ends meet. It was research for his main pursuit: using art to advocate for better treatment of people in menial jobs in a city with one of the widest income gaps in the world.
The Great Migration Series
Practitioner:
Jacob Lawrence
Date:
May 12 1941
National Public Radio (NPR): There's no historical marker outside Jacob Lawrence's childhood home in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. But Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has an idea of what it might say: "Here lived one of the 20th century's most influential visual artists, a man named Jacob Lawrence, who was a child of southern migrants."
A Night Of Philosophy And Ideas
Practitioner:
various
Date:
Jan 27 2018
"A Night of Philosophy and Ideas is a thinker’s lollapalooza. The free, 12-hour weekend lyceum at the Brooklyn Public Library includes spirited debate, live music, theater, performance art pieces, and film screenings. At any given hour, five or six different events will be taking place simultaneously. Visitors are encouraged to come and go as the spirit moves them.
Protesters Unfurl Three-Story Banner
Practitioner:
G.U.L.F.
Date:
Nov 5 2014
A thirty-nine-foot banner was unfurled in the rotunda of a sparsely-attended Guggenheim Museum this evening, the latest action carried out by the Gulf Ultra Luxury Front (G.U.L.F.) activist group. Decrying labor abuse at the museum’s planned Abu Dhabi outpost, the banner announced the forthcoming “Countdown” campaign by Gulf Labor, the larger collective of artists and activists of which G.U.L.F. is an offshoot.

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