ArtistsActivists is a youth empowerment and advocacy organization started in 2011 by graduate students at Yale University. Through the various ArtistsActivists programs, artists and designers share their skills with young people around the world. Since more people are joining our team bringing with them certain skills and project ideas, the Artists Activists mission is constantly evolving.
The KLE - Kit de Libertad de Expresión (or Freedom of Speech Kit), is a portable digital device that allows people from all over the world to participate to remote protests by sending and displaying text messages in public space. The interactive banner is (unsurprisingly) inspired by the record number of social protests that took place in Spain in 2011. It is estimated that over 23.000 demonstrations have been organised that year around the country.
February 29, 2012
The Kansas City Star
By Jessica Blakeborough
The chickens have been granted a stay of execution.
City codes prevent Amber Hansen, a Lawrence artist, from displaying and then butchering chickens for an art project, a city official says.
And that has animal activists rejoicing.
Contra-Tiempo’s first Miami dance performance will bring Ana Maria Alvarez back to her roots. Her father’s family settled in Miami after leaving Cuba in the early ’60s. Most of them, including his four siblings and their spouses and children, still live here, and Alvarez expects much of the clan to attend her show.
What happens to explicitly political art when it’s placed inside of the White Cube? Paint the Protest, a group show curated by Nancy Spector at Off Paradise self-consciously poses this question, and further aims to reveal the place and purpose of activist art in general.
On Tuesday, May 8, in the midst of final exam week, a group of female first-year students performed a public art action at UC Berkeley to call attention to the UC Regents’ privatization of what was once the premier public university in the country.(See photos below)
Transfixed by racial, political, and socioeconomic tensions saturating the news, movement artists Jon Boogz and Lil Buck, enveloped by the art of Alexa Meade, switch off the TV and release their emotion into a stirring dance that is both a lament and a spirited call to action.
The performance, “Lambrakis LivZ”, concerns the re-enactment of the political speech of Grigoris Lambrakis given in Athens in 1962. Grigoris Lambrakis was a peace-activist, assassinated by a paramilitary plot on June 1963 at Thessaloniki, Greece.
“The Split”, 26"H x 20"W x 18"D (aluminum, physics books, iPod running a countdown timer program, light, shadow) uses the shadow of a “High School Physics” book to represent World Trade Center, Building #7 that fell into its own footprint at free fall speed (6.5 seconds) on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. We were told that fire caused it to fall, but that is impossible and defies the basic Laws of Physics.
Artistic Activist, Charlotte Claire, is at the forefront of initiating revolutionary change in mental health care. Her project, The Babyfacedassassin, is dedicated to improving mental health care and inspiring people to care for their mental health.
"I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we'll turn the world...INSIDE OUT."
– JR, TED2011
Established Cape Town based artist Brett Murray returns to Goodman Gallery Johannesburg with Hail to the Thief II. This body of satirical work continues his acerbic attacks on abuses of power, corruption and political dumbness seen in his 2010 Cape Town show Hail to the Thief.
This interactive, site-specific project is a comment on how we - constantly attached to mobile devices - neglect to observe the environment around us. Like ostriches, we willingly trap our heads, minds, and imagination in a fantasy world that is detached from reality.
Three colorful fabric tunnels span a man-made grove of Elm trees in downtown Boston, defining an intimate courtyard where nature clashes with cartoonish representation.
The project (created in 2009-2010) consists of painted plats and posters depicted with drawings of police torture scenes. Images also include snippets of email exchanges. The plates have been exhibited in numerous galleries in Ukraine, and posters were hung in public spaces.
VOA NEWS March 29, 2012 By Nico Colombant
WASHINGTON--A Sudanese artist from the restive Blue Nile region is using art and activism to promote the plight of people caught between borders and conflict.
In an audio montage of memories from refugees, the sounds of gunfire and explosions mix with crying babies. Narrator Michelle Orecchio describes how to reverse war's grip on so much of humanity.
Project IMPACT is an 8-week leadership-through-storytelling workshop for teen survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. The goal of Project IMPACT is to introduce survivors to the idea that sharing their stories is a powerful advocacy tool that can impact the legislative process and work to combat sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.
A beauty contest for landmine victims challenges normal concepts of beauty. The search for beauty takes many forms. The traditional beauty pageant might be thought to be one of the less acceptable, concentrating as it does on conventional ideas of female perfection. Miss Landmine is a challenge to normal concepts of beauty. It is a beauty pageant held in Angola, a country ravaged by war and its aftermath, for women who have lost limbs from landmines.
The Haitian Creole word "konbit" denotes the idea of similar talents joining together to work towards a common goal. The founders — a group of photographers, educators, and artists — came up with the idea for Fotokonbit a few years ago to "empower Haitians to tell their own stories and document their community", but it was the 2010 earthquake that gave the group new urgency.
American Painter, Joe Lovett completes painting of historic magnitude, Stretch the Strangle Hold is a painting that captures an emotional response to the lie of war.
With World Comics India, the organization he started, Sharad has pioneered a cheap and easy medium for poor people to communicate meaningfully on issues that are neglected by the conventional media. While the urban elite dominates public media, the grinding day-to-day concerns of millions are rarely heard. Layers of discrimination and abuse heaped on huge numbers of people keep their problems out of sight and out of mind.
Turf the Turf hopes to inspire you to reconsider your front lawn by sharing existing examples of creative uses on a fun bike tour around the city of Kelowna. There are many options, such as xeriscaping (using native plants), front yard gardening or even installing original art that can display your creativity and offer you new ways to relate with your environment and your neighbourhood.
David Černý has been called "l'enfant terrible" of Czech art. Since 1991, Černý continues to produce some of Czech Republic’s most famous political sculptures. His grand sculptures are almost always mocking the system through humor. Many of his well-known pieces remain as public art and have sparked much conversation. Examples of these can be found littered around Prague.
Decolonize Me features six contemporary Aboriginal artists whose works challenge, interrogate and reveal Canada’s long history of colonization in daring and innovative ways.
For the past 20 years, Great Bend school district art teachers have been letting their students collaborate on an art project at the Barton County Historical Society Museum. This year, they will ground their efforts in working together to make a mural. Their teachers are trying to instill the fact that art builds community, as it has here for the past two decades.