Projects tagged "East Asia"

Snake Ceiling
Practitioner:
Ai Wei Wei
Date:
Aug 17 2013
On May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed approximately 90,000 people. Ai Weiwei created this serpentine sculpture, made of backpacks, to commemorate the more than 5,000 school children who were killed when their shoddily constructed schools collapsed.
FEMALE WORKERS AT SHOP IN JAPAN ASKED TO WEAR BADGES IF ON THEIR PERIOD TO COMBAT STIGMA
Practitioner:
Michi Kake Store
Date:
Nov 1 2019
Female staff members at a new shop in Osaka, Japan are being encouraged to wear badges to indicate when they’re on their period to tackle the stigma surrounding menstruation in the country. Women working at the Michi Kake store, which sells an array of female sexual and menstrual health products, do not have to take part in the scheme, but those that do will pin one of the “period badges” next to their regular name tags.
Gangnam for Freedom
Practitioner:
Anish Kapoor and friends
Date:
Nov 22 2012
Earlier this year Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei recorded a gangnam style video, dancing handcuffed, sending a message to the Chinese authorities who responded by banning the video as soon as it came online. British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor
menstrual pad mutual aid boxes
Practitioner:
Chinese University Students
Date:
Oct 30 2020
Since 2020, university students across China have launched a grassroots initiative to combat menstrual stigma by placing “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in campus restrooms. These boxes, often accompanied by signs reading “Take one if you need it, donate if you can,” provide free sanitary pads to anyone caught off guard by their period—offering both practical relief and a symbolic challenge to the cultural silence surrounding menstruation.
Buses in Seoul install 'comfort women' statues to honour former sex slaves
Practitioner:
Dong-A Transit bus company
Date:
Aug 7 2017
Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
My World Is In Your Blindspot
Practitioner:
Tenzing Rigdol
Date:
Jul 1 2014
This is a series of paintings reflecting the struggle and sacrifices made by the Tibetan people for independence. The author is Tenzing Rigdol, who is a Tibetan and influenced a lot by the Dalai Lama and traditional Tibetan culture. The paintings are full of Tibetan cultural elements. For instance, the characters created in the paintings are Tibetan monks, who are the typical representatives of their culture.
Local artist stages demonstration inspired by protesters in China
Practitioner:
Yolanda He Yang
Date:
Dec 11 2022
Late last month, Chinese citizens took up a creative means of protest over the nation’s strict “zero-COVID” policy. In a place with little tolerance for large public demonstrations, protesters have been holding up blank pieces of paper. Their ingenuity inspired a local artist Yolanda He Yang to stage a public art demonstration to subtly communicate their dissent.
Dystopian Noah's ark reflects China's environmental woes
Practitioner:
Cai Guo-Qiang
Date:
Aug 9 2014
A dilapidated wooden fishing boat laden down with animals who are just skin and bone, a sort of dystopian Noah’s ark trying to escape the end of the earth and an empty city devoid of human life that has been overtaken by nature.
Rose Boy
Practitioner:
Singer Jolin Tsai
Date:
Dec 26 2018
“Rose Boy” (玫瑰少年) refers to Yeh Yung-chih, a 15-year-old junior high school student in Taiwan who died on April 20, 2000, after years of bullying due to his non-conforming gender expression. Though the official cause of death was ruled accidental—he allegedly slipped in a school bathroom—the circumstances surrounding his death, including prior complaints from his mother about repeated verbal and physical harassment, drew widespread public attention.
Take a Photo, Save a Child
Practitioner:
Jianrong Yu
Date:
Jan 25 2012
On January 17, 2011, Hong Yuping (洪玉萍), from Fujian Province, contacted Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), about her family’s plight and requested assistance: In June 2009, their son, Yang Weixin (杨伟鑫), then age six, was abducted from their hometown, Quanzhou, and they had been searching for him ever since.1 In early 2010, Hong had recognized Yang Weixin in a photo of three children begging outside a Xiamen train statio
Chinese See Themselves in a Chained Woman
Practitioner:
netizens, journalists, lawyers, academics...
Date:
Jan 25 2022
The Xuzhou chained woman incident, also known as the Xuzhou eight-child mother incident, is a case of human trafficking, false imprisonment, sexual assault, severe mistreatment, and subsequent events that came to light in late January 2022 in Xuzhou's Feng County, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
Chinese Feminist Occupy the Men's Toilets
Practitioner:
Li Maizi
Date:
Jun 25 2014
Women around the world fed up with long lines for the ladies’ restroom have a new folk hero: a Beijing college student leading her own version of an “occupy” movement in southern China.
Creative Activism in the Service of Corporations
Practitioner:
McDonalds
Date:
Dec 7 2012
McDonald’s wanted children in Hong Kong to spend more time with their imagination after a study showed that children spend an average of 5 hours studying per day. In its new ‘I’m Amazing’ campaign, the fast food chain challenges these children to draw and create their ideal McDonald’s environment.
Pyongyang Racer
Practitioner:
North Korean Government
Date:
Dec 23 2012
North Korea Releases Country’s First-Ever Video Game North Korea has just released the country’s first-ever video game titled 'Pyongyang Racer'. The racing game was created by a developer known only as Nosotek, and was commissioned by Koryo, a British tour company that takes travelers to North Korea.
"Dying to Survive": A Movie on Generic Drugs
Practitioner:
Director Muye Wen (文牧野）, Yong Lu (陆勇)
Date:
Aug 7 2019
The screen portrayal of a cancer sufferer whose illegal import of foreign medicines into China spurred national policy changes has become a box-office smash as audiences flock to a rare Chinese film on a hot-button issue. Dying To Survive is based on Lu Yong, who was arrested in 2013 after illegally importing a generic cancer drug in a case that sparked public debate about high medical costs.
Surf China’s Censored Web at an Internet Cafe in New York
Practitioner:
Dan Phiffer
Date:
Mar 1 2016
It may have been a while since you’ve set foot in an internet cafe, but a pop-up one on the Lower East Side offering free tea on top of free wifi is well worth a visit for a lesson in online freedoms.
Journey of a Yellow Man
Practitioner:
Lee Wen
Date:
Sep 1 1992
Singaporean artist Lee Wen’s series Journey of a Yellow Man (1992–2012), one of his most famous and long-standing performances, was not simply a personal affront, it was a political affront. At the intersection of Asian art history, critical race theory, and migration and diasporic studies, one is never far (enough away) from the chromatic framing of race and ethnicity: yellow race, yellow peril, yellow face, the forever foreigner.
How Protest Art Is Helping Fuel the Historic Demonstrations Erupting Across China
Practitioner:
Chinese art students
Date:
Nov 28 2022
Students at art colleges across China are taking a strong stance in the midst of the largest wave of protests to have gripped the country since 1989. As demonstrations against the government’s strict Covid-19 policies erupted across the country over the weekend, students rallied on campuses to create protest art and graffiti.
Memorial Hall to the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre
Practitioner:
Nanjing Municipal Government
Date:
Dec 13 1985
Nanjing, a picturesque city lying by the Yangtze River, owes its fame to its favorable geographic position, galaxy of talents and profound historical background. Having served as the capital of ten dynasties in ancient China, its splendour has remained and even enlarged with an extended population up to 600,000 when the government of the Republic of China set up its capital there in 1927.
Beijing Sitong Bridge protest
Practitioner:
Peng Lifa
Date:
Oct 13 2022
The Beijing Sitong Bridge protest was a protest in China during the prelude to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
"Escape the Corset"
Practitioner:
Jeon Bora
Date:
May 10 2019
In this black-and-white image, there are no strands of hair or remnants of makeup to be found, except a shaved head belonging to a South Korean. Jeon photographed this image in 2019 for her exhibition that aimed to "destroy the socially defined idea of a woman” (Kuhn 1). The visuals in this image is a brazen response to the conventional beauty standards that has been gripping South Korean women.
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.
Thai youth takes creative defiance into election
Practitioner:
Young campaigners in Thailand
Date:
May 9 2023
As the No. 59 bus hurtled down Ratchadamnoen Klang road in Bangkok's Old Town, its passengers diverted their attention from the intense midday heat to a small crowd on the concrete below. About 25 people were marching and chanting, photographers scuttling in front of them.
Rokudenashiko and Her Man-Boat
Practitioner:
Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi)
Date:
Mar 1 2014
Megumi Igarashi—who goes by the name Rokudenashiko, or "good-for-nothing" in Japanese—is known as a "vagina artist" in her native Japan. Among the pieces she's created are a vagina chandelier, a remote-controlled vagina car, and a 3-D-printed kayak modeled after her vulva, which she actually rowed in 2014 "as a metaphorical image of life springing from it," she told Glamour through a translator.
In Women’s Rights Battle, a Call to Underarms
Practitioner:
Weibo User
Date:
May 26 2015
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.

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