Projects tagged "Does nothing (at all)"

Doesn't really have an impact, beyond possibly expressing the artist-activist's dissatisfaction with the world.

Zhang Donghui, a young artist, was detained for more than three months and had to pay 3,995 yuan in compensation for writing the words "Three years, I have become numb."
Practitioner:
Zhang Donghui
Date:
Aug 17 2022
Zhang Donghui, born in 1992, is a native of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China. He graduated from the Sculpture Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2017. He has been living and working as a professional artist in Beijing since then.
‘Not Yours’
Practitioner:
Beata Kruszynski
Date:
May 1 0000
“My image was inspired by the #MeToo Revolution, my personal experiences with the male gaze and a healthy amount of frustration and repulsion. What I hope to convey in this image is the sense of verbal, physical and energetic male ownership that is placed on women in society.” — Beata Kruszynski is a freelance illustrator and art teacher in Ontario, Canada.
Washington, DC climate protesters drag paint on glass cover of art sculpture
Practitioner:
Declare Emergency
Date:
Apr 27 2023
Climate protesters in Washington, D.C. were handcuffed on Thursday after they dragged paint on a glass cover protecting an art sculpture. The incident happened at the National Gallery of Art by the activism group Declare Emergency in an attempt to bring attention to climate change, according to the Washington Post.
Congo Man Sets Himself Ablaze for Peace
Practitioner:
Unidentified Man
Date:
Nov 8 2023
A video that was first posted on X (formerly Twitter) on November 8, of a Congolese man setting himself on fire has gone viral. The gruesome clip has started a discussion on whether a genocide is occurring in the DRC and is being ignored by both Africa and the rest of the world.
Untitled (Andrea Fraser)
Practitioner:
Andrea Fraser
Date:
Apr 1 2003
WITH HER 2003 PROJECT UNTITLED, Andrea Fraser throws us an archetype of sexual and cultural identity. More than in her other performances, Fraser here works without the protection of a research-based script, a surrogate actor, or the remove that often characterizes analytical thinking. The central action in Untitled has Fraser and a male client of her US gallery meet for a session of sex and video recording in a New York hotel room.
Free William Banks/Jail Saga
Practitioner:
William Banks
Date:
Feb 1 2025
William Banks is a comedian and artist who, prior to his viral prison saga in 2025, was best known for a community that he led called Call World, which he describes on the website as “a planet in an alternate universe ruled by human-headed Worms sexually obsessed with William Banks.” The story goes that Banks was first visited by a worm from Car World after getting stuck in an industrial freezer and coming to terms with his death before eventually being
Artist Rufina Bazlova uses embroidery as a form of ‘gentle protest’
Practitioner:
Rufina Bazlova
Date:
Jan 1 2020
Rufina Bazlova is not afraid to surrender her art to activism. Born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic ruled by the authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko for 29 years now, Bazlova knows all too well that being apolitical is a privilege many Eastern Europeans cannot afford. 2020 was a pivotal year for Belarus, not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic but also the presidential elections, which declared Lukashenko president for the sixth time.
Tinder Hack - Bros Swiping Bros
Practitioner:
Anonymous
Date:
Mar 1 2015
Man is a thirsty beast, and nowhere is that thirst more acutely exemplified than on Tinder, the matchmaking app that lets users swipe right in their quest to find love, lust, bots, or viral marketers. Now a California-based programmer has tweaked the app’s API, creating a catfish machine that fools men into thinking they’re talking to women — when in fact they’re talking with each other.
Mona Lisa undamaged after protesters at the Louvre throw soup at Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece
Practitioner:
Riposte Alimentaire
Date:
Jan 28 2024
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (around 1503-19) was attacked at the Musée du Louvre, in Paris, today by environmental activists who threw soup over the world's most-recognised and most-viewed painting. The celebrated portrait, which has been protected by security glass for the past 70 years, was not damaged in the attack.
Ai Weiwei’s Colored Vases: Clever Artwork Or Vandalism?
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Jan 1 2006
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?
Song Ta Scandal Puts Art World's Sexism on Full Display
Practitioner:
Song Ta
Date:
Jan 1 2013
Ahead of a recent exhibition at the prestigious modern art museum OCAT Shanghai, the artist Song Ta described the process of creating his multimedia piece “Uglier and Uglier.” After secretly filming thousands of unsuspecting female college students, Song and three assistants painstakingly ranked them by their perceived attractiveness; those deemed most appealing featured early in the show, with the women on display getting progressively “uglier” as the
Truisms
Practitioner:
Jenny Holzer
Date:
Jul 5 1978
Holzer's Truisms have become part of the public domain, displayed in storefronts, on outdoor walls and billboards, and in digital displays in museums, galleries, and other public places, such as Times Square in New York. Multitudes of people have seen them, read them, laughed at them, and been provoked by them. That is precisely the artist's goal.
Ai Weiwei, Stools, 2014. Courtesy of Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Apr 3 2014
Chinese artist Ai WeiWei has drawn on the stool part of that French surrealist's pioneer work for his latest exhibition, the largest ever devoted to Ai, which opens in Berlin this Thursday. The show, entitled Evidence, is at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall, and consists of either entirely new works, or pieces never seen in Germany before. The exhibition is huge, taking up 3,000 square metres in total and running across 18 rooms.
The Mending Project
Practitioner:
Beili Liu
Date:
Mar 3 2011
Imagine walking into a silent room where a woman is mending. Now imagine that she's sitting underneath 1,500 pairs of sharp Chinese scissors that are suspended from the ceiling, precariously pointed downwards. This was the idea behind The Mending Project by Beili Liu.
Spotify removes Neil Young's music after he objects to Joe Rogan's podcast
Practitioner:
Neil Young
Date:
Jan 27 2022
Spotify has removed famed singer-songwriter Neil Young's recordings from its streaming platform.
ChallengeAccepted: empowering women
Practitioner:
Women in Turkey, global online users
Date:
Jan 1 2016
#ChallengeAccepted, also known as the Challenge Accepted campaign, is an Instagram tagged challenge as well as an awareness campaign on empowering women involving sharing posts of black-and-white selfies.
Bed-Stuy Fish Pond
Practitioner:
Hajj Lovick
Date:
Jul 30 2024
The Bed-Stuy Aquarium (also known as the Hancock Street Bed-Stuy Aquarium) is a makeshift goldfish pond located on a sidewalk in the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. The pond, originally formed by a puddle from a leaky fire hydrant, garnered attention from locals and the press beginning at the time of its creation in August 2024.
Dude Protests with a Sign
Practitioner:
Seth Phillips
Date:
Feb 8 2020
From an article in BoredPanda: "If you’ve ever felt like your voice and opinion doesn’t matter in the vast world, then Seth is here to prove you wrong. This New Yorker runs the ‘Dude With Sign’ Instagram account where he uploads photos of himself protesting the strangest, weirdest, most random things. And the best thing is, we can relate to most of what he’s written on his signs.
Activists Pour Porridge and Spray Soup on Queen Victoria Sculptures in Glasgow to Protest Cost of Living
Practitioner:
This Is Rigged
Date:
Mar 3 2024
Activists poured porridge and jam on a marble bust of Queen Victoria and sprayed fire extinguishers filled with soup onto a large bronze statue of the monarch during two recent protests in Glasgow, Scotland. The group, called This Is Rigged, claimed responsibility for the two protests, which took place inside the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum at noon on March 3 and at George Square at 10:45 am local time on March 4.
When Luxury Stores Decorate Their Riot Barricades With Protest Art
Practitioner:
Various Artists
Date:
Jun 22 2020
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.
Protest in Inner Mongolia against CCP's Mandarin-only Education
Practitioner:
Ethnic Mongolians in China
Date:
Sep 1 2020
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians have protested across northern China in opposition to Beijing plans to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in some school subjects.
untitled subway graffiti
Practitioner:
Unknown
Date:
Feb 9 2025
alternating yellow and white chalk on black blank subway advertisement spaces. "NO ONE VOTED FOR ELON" "RISE AND RESIST" "RESISTANCE IS CONTAGIOUS" "WHO WILL SAVE US? WE WILL SAVE US" found on the uptown C train platform at 50th street station. found on february 9, 2025.
WE CHANT RESISTANCE!
Practitioner:
Mbizo Chirasha
Date:
Apr 19 0020
This special EDition is a revolutionary chant against the menacing cantankerous demonic , satanic COVID 19. And again doubles as a bold and poetic supplication to the great Almighty God to release us off this pandemic bondage. This Edition is a poetically driven spiritual prayer for freedom of expression and freedom after expression.
Anti-Trump protesters lay ‘body bags’ outside one of his New Jersey golf clubs
Practitioner:
Refuse Fascism Philly
Date:
Apr 4 2020
Social distancing guidelines didn’t stop members of Refuse Fascism Philly from criticizing President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic on Saturday. Rather than march as a crowd through Center City, a handful of protesters from the group, which has repeatedly called for Trump’s removal, drove their cars through Philadelphia before arriving at the Trump National Golf Club in Pine Hill, N.J.
The Wisdom of the Universe
Practitioner:
Christi Belcourt
Date:
Jan 1 2014
The Wisdom of the Universe was painted in 2014 by Métis artist, author, and activist Christi Belcourt. Based in Northeastern Ontario, Belcourt is best known for her large-scale acrylic paintings — like this one — that use hundreds of thousands of tiny dots to simulate Métis beadwork. At the Art Gallery of Ontario, where The Wisdom of the Universe lives, the painting has become a popular sight.

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