Attacking, destroying, and re-vamping people’s common conception of the front yards is what Fritz Haeg does through his Edible Estates project. Haeg uses the front yard as a space to show the potential of local food growth. Additionally, the project counters a capitalist-run society, by putting the power and process of producing food back into the hand…
Adrian Piper’s The Catalysis Series
When you enter into a space, do you think about the unspoken rules regarding how you are supposed to act? Adrian Piper’s Catalysis Series goes against notions of how one should act within a variety of spaces ranging from museums to subways to the street to libraries. For example in one of her works she played loud…
When Faith Moves Mountains by Francis Alys
Francis Alys successfully merges together land art and democratic art through his work When Faith Moves Mountains. With this work, Alys gathered five hundred volunteers to come together and physically move a huge sand dune several inches over the course of a day. Along with being a unique land art exercise, the piece contains meaning within the political context…
Palas por Pistolas by Pedro Reyes
One town represents the ability to turn guns into shovels for planting trees through Pedro Reyes’ Palas por Pistolas democratic artwork. In the city of Culiacan, Mexico, a city with a high rate of deaths by gunshot, Pedro Reyes invited residents to give up their guns in order to turn them into shovels for the planting of…
The Posters of Paris ’68
Straddling art vs. propaganda, artists of from The Ecole des Beuax-Arts in Paris created posters supporting rebellion and rejection of the, at the time, status quo of French society. 1968 being in the pre-internet age, these artists were able to disseminate information through the printing thousands of posters. These posters didn’t simply deal with a…
Tatlin’s Whisper #5 – Tania Bruguera
The presence of the police is greatly heightened and brought into hyper-focus within Tania Bruguera’s Tatlin’s Whisper #5 in order to bring awareness to the complex relationship that exists between the public and the police. Installed at the Tate Modern in Britain, this work incorporates two policemen in uniform mounted on horses which are introduced to the gallery…
Francis Alys, when faith moves mountains, 2002
Moving a mountain is an impossible task. Sure, moving a pile of dirt can be done with the right equipment, but a mountain? No. If someone told you to move a mountain you would probably give up before even starting. This happens with other issues that appear to be too massive to complete. Why start…
Gabriel Orozco, Tortillas and Bricks, 1990
Tortillas and bricks are items you would never think to see in such harmony. The artist Gabriel Orozco loves to play with everyday objects to create unnatural still lives. If anything they make someone stop and laugh or say “huh?” In a society where we can hardly look up from our phones long enough to…
Three Weeks in May (1977)
Sexual assault and rape were not always hot topics for news outlets and politicians. To discuss either was frowned upon and simply not done to large extent. Suzanne Lacy aimed to do so with a very simple action. In Los Angeles, she went to the police station everyday for three weeks to obtain rape reports…
The Roof is on Fire (1993-1994)
Crying fire may seem like the morally wrong thing to do, but in the name of democracy it might just be the right thing. Suzanne Lacy, cried fire in order to gain media coverage of live conversations taking place between high school students. Covering the topics of family, sex, politics and more, the debates that…
