Exhibition visitors have expressed feelings of uneasiness or even pain and nostalgia when seeing Colored Vases by Ai Weiwei1. The 51 vases that make up the artwork are originally treasures from the Neolithic Age (5000–3000 BCE) and the artist has dunked them in common industrial paint.
Why did Ai Weiwei do it?
Chanel Miller is a Palo Alto–born artist and writer. She first came into the public eye as “Emily Doe,” the victim of a 2015 Stanford University sexual assault whose impact statement presented in court went viral. Miller relinquished her anonymity in 2019, when she published the acclaimed memoir, “Know My Name.” "I was, I am, I will be" is Miller’s first commissioned artwork for a museum and is on view through February 2022.
By Maha ElNabawi
It was a landmark day when prominent women’s rights activist Doria Shafiq bravely led a march of 1,500 women to storm the gates of Parliament on 19 February 1951. After several hours of unrelenting protest, Shafiq was finally received inside the office, where the council agreed to consider the demands of Egyptian women.
As the summer warms up, bringing with it sleeveless tops, Xiao Meili, a women’s rights advocate, is collecting photos of women’s armpits. Her goal: to challenge a growing belief in China that a woman must have hair-free armpits to be attractive.
"An atmosphere of fear and anger spread across Myanmar this week as millions of people awoke to find out the military had taken control, ousting the elected government.
But how do you fight back in a country where protests have been violently suppressed before?
For some, it has meant putting pen to paper and taking the battle online.
It’s the radiant baby, the barking dog and the dancing man; the badges and the t-shirts; the unmissable mural spelling out CRACK IS WACK. Keith Haring’s career was short but spectacular, and he leaves behind a lasting legacy. From his chalk drawings in city-wide subway stations, to his collaborations with the superstars of his day, Haring’s life was founded on a belief in the power of people to change the world.
The prints exhibited June 2013 at Firestorm in Asheville NC, will comprise two separate bodies of work; Chelsea Ragan’s combination screen print / woodblock print / painting / drawings graphically detail police shootings of young black males from across the country, and Adam Void’s hand-painted screen prints state the facts of important national news stories that have been swept under the rug of mainstream corporate media.
An exhibition of textile-based work by disabled artists, organised in protest at the inaccessibility of an exhibition by a popular artist, when it came to Leeds.
Six months before Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc in the Caribbean, a group of Puerto Rican artists were invited to participate in a residency program in Miami by local art organizations. The artists were offered abandoned storefronts-turned-studios at a historic downtown mall, where they’d exhibit their work during Miami Art Week in December to engage an art world that often overlooks the island territory.
Open Call for Artist:
"Hear for All | Activism through Prints" Exhibition
The Art Gallery
Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon
hearforall.wordpress.com
A mixture of a social cause with a creative vision, this visual art exhibit is dedicated to the millions of unemployed citizens and veteran’s in the United States. Constructed out of 1284 used empty wallets from over 2,000 donated nation wide; this project aims to have a voice about the economic problems our country is facing and show the potential of art to awaken our social consciousness.
After being contacted by a member of the Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking group , illustrator Marc Scheff agreed to do a few drawings for a deck of cards depicting some of the people and institutions responsible for causing the Great Recession.
Paris inaugurates its first fresco, on the Human Rights Wall, in tribute to six contemporary activists. To be discovered in the capital's 12th arrondissement, this XXL work of committed street art is by Mahn Kloix.
Wallhunter's Slumlord Project is an innovative project in Baltimore, Maryland that will use street art to expose and publicize vacant and dilapidated housing and the responsible parties for those conditions. The project will use different street art forms to display art that will attract community interest and support community identity.
FEMEN is an organization that is revolutionizing the feminist movement. Founded in Ukraine in 2008 and adopted in Spain in 2013, FEMEN protests gender-based issues such as inequalities, violence, patriarchy, etc. Since its creation, it has spread to several other countries, and there have been hundreds of organized protests.
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.
Yu Hong’s Female Writer, a painted and photographic portrait of the writer Zhao Bo 趙波 (b. 1971), recalls courtly images of idealized beauties. Yu, however, deliberately complicates the perspective in her composition: she asked the sitters for her She series to select photographs of themselves that could be paired with her paintings, meaning that the images together convey dual female perspectives, both the artist’s and the subject’s.
This past Valentine's Day the Fresh Juice Party pulled another "art prank;" this time sending chocolate shaped as dead American soldiers and sent them to U.S. government officials, especially to the previous Bush administration. This prank while very effective in its message, is not so effective in terms of timing.
It was a quick turnaround for federal employers to recognize Juneteenth as a new federal holiday. But some cities were ready with new statues honoring George Floyd, whose killing by police in Minneapolis last year sparked a nationwide racial justice movement.
Shortly after the close of this year’s International Women’s Day, China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo shut down Feminist Voices. With 180,000 followers, the group’s social media account was one of the most important advocacy channels for spreading information about women’s issues in China, but in an instant, it was gone. A few hours later, the private messaging app WeChat also shuttered an account for the group.
The Acción Poética movement is a literary phenomenon that began in Monterrey, Mexico in 1996. It was founded by Mexican poet Armando Alanis Pulido and involves painting and intervening abandoned walls in cities with fragments of poetry. The content is usually love poems or optimistic phrases. Also, some phrases refer to the current situation in the cities (though one of their rules is to not talk about politics or religious beliefs).
Empathy may be the cornerstone of any Global Justice movement, but how do we cultivate the conditions for empathy to thrive?
The wheelbarrow symbolises something universally useful, practical and pleasingly straightforward. A space to deliver things in an efficient and direct manner - no packaging and completely people powered.
China's only seaside theater festival has been held in the resort town of Aranya in north China's Hebei Province. Artists from around the world traveled there to take deep dive into the world of dramatic performance. For theatergoers, there were interactive activities including cross-border installations such as seaside talks, environmental drama readings, screenings, theater houses, parades and bonfires by the sea.