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Activism through Art: Ai Weiwei’s “Sunflower Seeds”
Sunflower seeds: small, unique, and fragile; we consider them cheap edibles. Sunflower Seeds was a 2010 Tate Modern Installation by the Chinese contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, an exhibit for which he was arrested.
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An Inconvenient Monument: Berlin’s East Side Gallery
The East Side Gallery is the largest open-air gallery in the world. Spanning about 1.3 kilometers along Berlin’s Mühlenstraße, the gallery adds much-needed splashes of color for the passengers driving by in their various transit modes – passing swatches of bright and dark colors, abstract and impressionist. The former border between East and West Berlin reflects the cornucopia of emotions felt by people worldwide when it fell on November 9, 1989. The remaining pieces of the wall speak to the division of the time, between east and west, betwixt the people and their government, and the battle of art versus graffiti.
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Art on the Ave: Finding Purpose During the Pandemic & After
Vanessa Kreytak shares the story of how the Art on the Ave initiative created opportunities for artists during the pandemic, and gave space to groups like the SoHo Renaissance Factory to create and grow.
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Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions
The STRAAT Museum in Amsterdam and its in-house STRAAT Gallery proudly announce their upcoming exhibition Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions. This exhibition will focus on four contemporary artists with Native American heritage: Kaplan Bunce, Danielle SeeWalker, Anthony Garcia Sr. & Jaque Fragua.
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Corie Mattie: Hope Dealer
Corie Mattie moved to Los Angeles to use art as a form of self-exploration. Her murals now jump off LA’s walls to share messages of hope and positivity even in the times of the most hopelessness and desperation.
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Wood You March: Plywood as Canvas
Renowned NYC graffiti artist Optimo NYC curated an exhibition of plywood boards painted on retail storefronts in 2020 in support of the Black Lives Matter movement at Sun Art NYC gallery in Brooklyn. In addition to plywood boards from 2020, the show displayed other works of art on wood at the opening reception on 3/8/2023. Check out Kurt Boone’s photo recap of the event!
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The Racialization of Beauty and Whitewashing in Anime
“Is it just me, or has anyone else also thought that the Japanese anime characters don’t look very Asian?” Chun Park examines the uncomfortable truths around how anime, a global art market, doesn’t actually depict its audiences in its continent of origin.
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Remembering Mahsa Jina Amini Around the World Through Murals for Freedom
Street art curator and muralist Cloe Hakakian has a global vision for how street art can contribute to the cause of fighting the corruption and violence in Iran in collaboration with street artists from Ashley Hodder in Pittsburgh to Ghazaleh Rastgar in Toronto to Despierto Collective in Berlin.
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Nasrin Sheykhi Draws A Free Future for Iranian Women
Cartoonist Nasrin Sheykhi, featured in UP5: ICONS, is no stranger to the power that art can have. But in the wake of the brutal murder of Jina (Mahsa) Amini by the Iranian morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly, Sheykhi is finding new ways to use her voice to stand with the woman of her native Iran.
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Lala, The Surreal Cartoonist
Miranda interviews Lala, a Brooklyn-based rising star cartoonist whose work confronts the male gaze and what emotions are considered acceptable for women.
