For Women’s History Month 2024, Hysterical Collective presented: Hysterical: Radical Creativity – the third instalment of the annual charity art exhibition and cultural programme taking place in March each year. Co-founded and curated by Eliza Hatch of Cheer Up Luv and Bee Illustrates, Hysterical is a queer and feminist-led exhibition and event showcase; centred around community, collaboration, and activism.
This act of art and activism displayed in the photograph was created in 1994 by the group La Radical Gai at the height of the HIV and AIDS epidemic that decimated many communities in Madrid. The first case of AIDS in Spain was documented in 1982. Since that time, 85,000 people in Spain have been diagnosed with AIDS and 60,000 people have died from the deadly virus (Soriano, Ramos, Barreiro, Fernandez-Montero, 2018).
“Art is so often only experienced through looking,” artist Caitlin Rose Sweet explained to The Huffington Post. “It’s a short pathway from the eyes to the brain. I want the whole body involved.”
New Beijing, New Marriage is a documentary shot by Fan Popo, a Chinese gay rights activist in 2009. The film recorded that a gay couple and a lesbian couple, who were volunteers instead of real homosexual couples, were having their wedding photos taken at Qianmen Street on Valentine’s Day. Qianmen Street is a crowded and famous shopping street in Beijing.
The user muchachafanzine on instagram is an activist who writes a "decolonial native xicana feminist fanzine". They are an online activist and they spread their message through their page, the zine, and through merchandise. Daisy Salinas began Muchacha Fanzine as a feminist punk zine in 2011. Over the years, Muchacha has grown into a larger, submission-based compilation of work by marginalized voices from around the world.
A small group of gay rights activists gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Beijing on Valentine’s Day to protest Russia’s antigay laws.
Behind a rainbow banner that read “To Russia with Love,” a dozen activists cheered as three couples puckered up and kissed in front of a countdown clock for the Sochi Winter Olympics outside the embassy’s tall walls.
It's this symbolism and the characters that repeatedly appear in Haring's work that provide the backbone of an exhibition opening March 16, 2018 at the Albertina Museum in Vienna. On view through June 24, 2018, "Keith Haring. The Alphabet," comprises 100 of the artist's works, from subway art and drawings to sculptures and paintings.
Last August, as protesters marched in Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old unarmed teen shot by a police officer, another group of activists began thinking about how to incorporate the creative community into the movement. The result is Manifest:Justice, a free pop-up art show taking place in Los Angeles.
The current cultural and political context in Macedonia marginalizes lesbians and women in general, and the dominant political party forces the traditional role of the woman, where she is a mother, a housewife, and of course, heterosexual. Furthermore, the major TV stations are flooded with Turkish soap operas, where traditional values are the leitmotif of the show.
Shift Change Dress is a community fashion & art project that utilizes a shift dress sewing pattern as a medium for communication and action. Participants are encouraged to use the pattern as a blank canvas for their art or message and to share their work with the community.
From 1993 to 1998, Spanish activist group Lesbianas Se Difunden (LSD) produced and published a collection of texts and visuals called Non-Grata (Snyder 10), using erotic images of the female body and sexual relationships to capture their audiences’ attention. Within these graphic publications would be calls for queer activism, female freedom, anti-capitalist critiques, and the overall necessity for protest (Snyder 10).
Sixth Tone - "A group of women trying to raise awareness of LGBT rights by advertising their single, gay sons and daughters at Shanghai’s “marriage market” were forced to disperse after a heated confrontation with other parents and security personnel.The so-called “marriage market” at Shanghai’s centrally located People’s Park draws a large crowd of parents who post signs each weekend describing their children in an effort to find a suitable partne
‘I’m an Egyptian, Muslim drag queen who aims to raise issues about Middle Eastern / LBGTQ issues within the Arab world and Muslim community. For too long it was drilled in my head that I was wrong, that I was going to Hell, and that’s simply not fair. No one speaks about the harsh mistreatment we go through as gay people in the Arab world. The internal torture and shame is more than enough.
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Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!) is a two-person public art project founded in 1991 by artist Carrie Moyer and photographer Sue Schaffner. Between 1991 and 2004 DAM! blitzed the streets of New York City with public art projects that combined Madison Avenue savvy with Situationist tactics.
In the early 1980s Keith Haring created hundreds of drawings in the New York subway system. He used chalk to paint on unused advertising space, which was covered with black sheets of paper. Haring was caught and fined numerous times.
Cassils' Becoming an Image confronts issues of queer and trans visibility, bodily violence, and the politics of witnessing. The performance uses a powerful blend of media—including live action in darkness, flash photography, clay sculpture, and sound—to explore how trauma and resilience are physically and symbolically inscribed onto the queer body.
"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.
Spanish soccer has witnessed and engaged in a variety of conversations in the last few years: Racism, politics, xenophobia, territorial issues, corruption, inmigration. However, there is an issue that remains untouched, and this issue is homophobia. Soccer is still a context where it is acceptable to use the word "marica" ("queer") in a pejorative way.
The Kiss of Love campaign in India is a non violent protest against moral policing. It started out as a Facebook page but gained momentum across India when a mob of conservative, right-wing party members attacked and demolished a coffee shop in Kozhikode, Kerala. Their grounds to do so was public display of affection by couples inside the coffee shop, which they saw as immoral activity.
Beyoncé’s album Renaissance is grounded in black queer ballroom culture. It debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard 200 and had the third highest album debut of 2022.
Spain is known for its beautiful scenic views, rich history, and rich culture. When we focus on Spain it mainly for the things that attract tourism. Often when living in paradise you forget the shadows that hold secrets are not far behind. I have uncovered a deep dark truth that hides within the cities - Sexual violence and the brutal inequality that women face in Spain.
In the wake of the amount of police brutality that has been occurring since the dawn of the damn police, an institution that began as a way to find escaped slaves, across the United States, #manisfestjustice chooses to make its explicit artistic mission to demand that power take responsibility, and to provide avenues to community empowerment in the meantime.
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