While meditating in front of a Nepalese Sarasvati statue on New Year's Day in 1991 at her California home, Mayumi received a calling that brought a sudden halt to painting. Having witnessed the horrors of atomic bombings as a child and later, watching her beloved Japan become a leader in nuclear-energy, and seeing the effects of depleted uranium, Mayumi had to pursue a global cause greater than her art or feminism.
“It could have been me,” Jean-Michel Basquiat would say at the mere mention of the untimely death of Michael Stewart. Stewart, a 25-year-old artist, was allegedly drawing on the walls of the subway on 15 September 1983 when he was approached by transit cops who then placed him under arrest.
During the public vacation of May Day, also called International Workers’ Day, “For People, Food is the First Necessity: Qiu Zhijie’s Writing in a Market” was launched at the crowded Sanyuanli market in Beijing.
New York artist Donna Choi wanted to create a “weird, memorable way” to discuss fetishization of Asian women, so she put together a satirical series about how to diagnose Yellow Fever—the specific obsession many Western men have with Asian culture.
The over-the-top series is a discussion of race crafted for the attention span of the Internet.
I emailed with Choi about her thinking behind the Yellow Fever series.
"For those who haven’t seen it, Big Bang Big Boom (2010) is yet another fabulous animated graffiti parable from the Blu
art collective. Their work is endlessly fascinating — animated
creatures sliding seamlessly from walls, through sand, along pipes and
under bridges into stop-motion interaction with beach garbage and
Doris Salcedo talked extensively with victims of the violence in Colombia. For the project titled Unland she spoke specifically with children who had witnessed the murder of their parents. This piece was a poetic response and representation of their testimony. Salcedo combined halves of tables together to make a whole. In the seam where the tables joined Salcedo meticulously sewed the tables together using white silk thread, dark hair and bone.
Dan Perjovschi is one of Romania’s foremost artistic voices. Although known as a talented multi-disciplinary artist in his home country, particularly for his early performance work, he is most widely known internationally for his massive drawing installations.
The collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle, a group of Kinshasa street performers turn their bodies into living sculptures, and use them to political ends. Among the artists is Jared, who regularly takes to the streets dressed as Robot Annonce. The costume, made from broken radio parts, is designed to raise awareness of fake news. “People receive so much incorrect information and many inaccuracies are spread. I want to fight this,” says Jared.
Stephanie H. Shih is a Brooklyn-based ceramist who explores Asian American identity through clay interpretations of grocery items. The ceramicist has created life-size painted clay Sriracha bottles, Pocky cartons, soy sauce gallons, and instant ramen as part of a series Shih conceived in 2018 called Oriental Grocery, to explore nostalgic foods of the Chinese American diaspora.
An oversized facsimile of Rush poppers, tipped over, pouring out its viscous contents: this example of underground gay iconography blown up to almost belligerent proportions perfectly represents the aims of Party Out of Bounds: Nightlife as Activism Since 1980, a new exhibition at La MaMa’s La Galleria. The group show, curated by Emily Colucci and Osman Can Yerebakan, gathers together works by a small yet distinct menagerie of queer artists.
Gregg Segal -- a California-based artist who is known for using the medium of photography to explore culture with the "sensibility of a sociologist" -- asked family, friends, neighbors and other acquaintances to save their trash and recyclables for a week and then lie down and be photographed in it:
Beginning in the early 1970s, the Los Angeles-based multi-media arts collective Asco (from the Spanish word for nausea) created performances, street theater and conceptual art that satirized the emerging styles of Chicano art and pushed the boundaries of what it might encompass.
CultureStrike in partnership with Mariposas Sin Fronteras , End Family Detention and 15 artists from across the country, brings you Visions From The Inside, a visual art project inspired by letters penned by detained migrants.
Tina Takemoto is an artist and associate professor of visual studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work examines issues of race, queer identity, memory, and grief. Her current project explores the hidden dimensions of same-sex intimacy and queer sexuality for Japanese Americans incarcerated by the US government during World War II.
The current face of clubhouse will be seeling a NFT of her art at an online marketplace Nifty Gateway, with the proceeds going to the Catalyst Fund for Justice. She is a futirst in her art, using a blend of physical materials and technologies to make pieces. Some range from including virtual realities or creating steel sculptures.
Instagram and Zines have become a tool for activists worldwide, and Vienna Rye (@vrye) has amassed over 126,000 followers by promoting education, mutual aid, and advocacy. They are a self-taught visual artist and revolutionary community organizer, which translates into their artwork. Vienna visualized a better world to build it. To do this, they use her art to confront settler colonialism, racism, and patriarchy.
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.
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 Chinese artist tells us the true story behind "Sky Ladder."
Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang is known for highly-publicized public spectacles that fill the sky with shimmering fireworks or colorful smoke.
We’re proud to announce the third iteration of Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects, an ongoing series of exhibitions organized by Chris E. Vargas, Executive Director of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art!
For this iteration Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects brings together art and archival material from University of Victoria’s world-renowned Transgender Archives to narrate an expansive and critical history of transgender communities.
In France, abstention, vote of protest, lassitude or violent reactions rise from all over the crisis of our "representative democracy ».
What about thinking the other way round ? What if we reappropriate the iconography of the election?
Asaf Hanuka is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His illustrations span the themes of technology, revolution, war, Judaism, and depictions of family life and the individual in modern day society.
“Piano Stairs” is an interactive playful musical stairway installation created into the Odenplan underground station of Stockholm to make people use stairs more often than elevator. The project was part of a Wolkswagen initiative called “The fun theory” whose main objective and mission is to “change people’s behaviour for the better by making it fun to do.”
Three months ago, when New York government officials ordered nonessential businesses closed to slow the spread of coronavirus, high-end retailers sheathed their stores in plywood barriers, as though readying for civil unrest.