April 30 is the last of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. To mark that inauspicious event, I spoke with Kenneth Lo, artist and social media manager for 100 Days Action, and artist Ricki Dwyer, who contributed the intervention Shred and Re-weave the American Flag. Our discussion ranged from how resistance efforts have changed since the inauguration, to the role artist–activists play in those efforts[…..]
On November 8, 2016, Donald J. Trump reached the nation’s highest political office after a long and brutal election cycle. In response, artists throughout the United States mobilized to resist regressive policy changes that would set progressive efforts back by at least fifty years. Writer and activist Ingrid Rojas Contreras collaborated with numerous Bay Area artists to form 100 Days Action, a creative affiliation described as[…..]
In a new book, the esteemed photojournalist Miki Kratsman describes the uneasy recognition by some former students at Tel Aviv’s Geographic Photography College in 2005: The relationship between photojournalists and media outlets was rapidly shifting in a direction that did not favor visual storytellers, as online platforms achieved supremacy and content demands increased exponentially. From their insecurity sprang Activestills, a collective of dedicated photographers whose[…..]
Seven exhibitions in Oakland and Berkeley commemorate the Black Panther Party’s (BPP) founding in October 1966. The celebration of one of the most successful and provocative social and political movements in American history reflects upon the Party’s profound influence. As Party member and long-time activist and educator Ericka Huggins notes, the breadth of engagement helped spread the Party’s resistance message: “The Black Panther Party always[…..]
Robert Mapplethorpe is forever associated with scandals that erupted at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Contemporary Art Center Cincinnati, as well as the crippling drawdown of federal funding that rendered the National Endowment for the Arts a casualty of the late-1980s culture wars. More recently, Mapplethorpe, or the foundation that bears his name, made headlines with two significant acquisitions made by the J.[…..]
