Artists Activism Escalates in Full Throttle Stance Against Whitney Vice Chair Warren Kanders

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Artists Activism Escalates in Full Throttle Stance Against Whitney Vice Chair Warren Kanders

Eight artists have now withdrawn from the Whitney Biennial over companies linked to Whitney Museum vice chairman Warren Kanders. New evidence this week links Sierra Bullets — a weapons manufacturer partially owned by Kanders -- to violence on the Israeli-Palestinian border in Gaza, reports Hyperallergic.

Safariland, a Jacksonville, Florida–based defense manufacturing company that produces triple chasers, is run by Warren Kanders. Hyperallergic has been active in detailing instances of Safariland products being used in politically fractious situations all over the globe, including the current border conflict running along America’s southern border with Mexico. Safariland specializes in “professional and protective equipment focused on the law enforcement, public safety, military, and recreational markets.”

In 2018, Forbes covered Kanders in a story Meet The Safariland Multimillionaire Getting Rich Off Tear Gas and More in the Defense Industry. Kanders’ involvement in producing tear gas, the chemical weapon of crowd control, is the most important focus on controversy between Kanders and activists worldwide. Kanders describes his company’s offerings as benign, rejecting activism against him personally and Swaziland’s tear gas production. “Whether it’s under Obama—he was fond of using these products very frequently—or under Bush or Clinton or whomever, we are there to make nonlethal products and to provide those products to friends of our government through very prescribed channels,” Kanders told Forbes.

The newest withdrawals from the biennial include the University of London-based research group Forensic Architecture , and their Whitney Biennial submission “Triple-Chaser” (2019). Now Forensic Architecture believes that they MAY — or its highly-likely — have found an unexploded open-tip bullet in the sand in Gaza.

In this link, Forensic Architecture details their investigation into the facts behind “Triple Chaser”, which includes events on the Tijuana-San Diego border.

Michael Moore Brings Anti-Trump "Terms of My Surrender" to Broadway

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Michael Moore Brings Anti-Trump "Terms of My Surrender" to Broadway

"I do not accept living in a country where Donald Trump is president," Michael Moore announced on the stage of the sold-out "The Terms of My Surrender" at the Belasco Theater on Broadway. "And I'm not leaving America," he continued, -- this super-smart, looks-are-deceiving schlump of a man.

Moore's mission is crystal clear. The Oscar-winning filmmaker and bestselling author plans is determined to leverage his Broadway debut to ignite Americans to throw Trump from the Oval Office by his butt. Moore believes that satirists "can bring him (Trump) down with humor, comedy and ridicule - simply because his awfully thin skin just can't take it," Moore said in June.

The first stage of this mission is the one-man play, "The Terms of My Surrender," which debuted in New York over the weekend. It comes as Moore is also working on an anti-Trump documentary, "Fahrenheit 11/9" - a reference to November 9, the day after Trump was elected. 

Even the German press is eagerly watching the debut of Michael Moore on Broadway. I'm thinking that maybe Moore needs to be a foil character on SNL. Speaking only for myself as an ardent Hillary supporter on HWN, Michael Moore has my ear. I find his head to be on very straight, and he feels no need to damn me, as most Berners do.

It's just great that the veteran activist Moore is bringing his one man show to Broadway. Let's hope it's a vehicle for sparking real conversation on the left. ~ Anne

Martha Stewart Goes Rogue With Trump & Snoop Dogg Artworks At Frieze New York

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Martha Stewart Goes Rogue With Trump & Snoop Dogg Artworks At Frieze New York

We don't know if Martha had a double shot of vodka in her morning green juice, before heading off Saturday to the Frieze Art Fair at Randall's Island Park in New York. In true Martha's new style, she enjoyed a double take at the juncture of Donald Trump's image positioned against her good friend's Snoop Digg.

"Was taking a pic of Trump and Snoop Dogg at Frieze and Martha Stewart walks up like this #america," Twitter user Newlin Tillotson wrote, alongside a photo of Stewart flipping the bird at Trump's portrait and giving a V sign to Snoop's.

Ever the businesswoman, Stewart also needed a promo for her and Snoop's VH1 cooking show 'Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party' and Sunday's 2017 MTV Movie and TV Awards.  Her Instagram photo shows her giving V signs to both men.  The pc pic was taken by an executive at Stewart's company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, who shared it on Instagram and said it was a "so much less interesting" version of a similar image. 

Oliver Wasow's Trump Rogues May 1-May 7 At NYC Steve Harvey Fine Art Benefits ACLU

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New York-based artist Oliver Wasow has created a haunting portrait series of key figures in the Trump administration. The entire series, titled 'Rogues Gallery' will comprise a week-long exhibition opening from May 1-May 7, 2017 at New York's Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, 208 Forsyth Street. More details.

ArtNet News describes the process: To create the subtly disturbing images, Wasow has worked with images sourced from the Internet, digitally manipulating each portrait in Photoshop, adjusting the backdrop and lighting and sometimes distorting physical features to draw out the subject’s creepy side. First Daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, for instance, have had their brown eyes swapped out for Vladimir Putin’s baby blues, in a commentary on the Russian government’s possible influences on the administration.

Although the images were created to be shared on social media, rather than displayed physically, Wasow is selling 12-by-16-inch prints of each portrait for $100 each, or the full set of 14 for $1,000. A poster of the series is priced at $200. All proceeds will benefit the ACLU.

Marilyn Minter, Alison Gingeras & KATSU Behind HAG's Trump Misogyny Poster Action

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Artist Marilyn Minter is again in US President Donald Trump's face, teaming up with curator Alison Gingeras and graffiti artist KATSU for a New York City action Tuesday, March 8, International Women's Day in a poster that calls out Trump's on the record statements about women, dubbed Trump's "sexual assault monologue," based on the transcript of the president's hot mic Access Hollywood recording.

AOC posted the viral social media and streets of New York action without knowing who was behind it. We should have known!! Halt Action Group (HAG), the artist-run protest group who previously created the Dear Ivanka campaign 

“We felt that the viral presence of the poster—it was all over Twitter and Instagram, and used by well-respected writers and commentators in their posts on women’s issues yesterday—was a potent tool to refute the normalization of the Trump administration,” HAG co-founder and curator Alison Gingeras told artnet News in an email. The piece hopes to combat, “the collective amnesia that can dangerously set in when it comes to Trump’s history of violence (verbal and sexual) towards women.”

Artist Marilyn Minter designed the image for HAG, and graffiti artist KATSU was enlisted to help install the 1,000 or so posters across Manhattan using wheatpaste. A high-resolution copy is available for download on the HAG website in both black-and-white and color, and the group is encouraging everyone to print and distribute the artwork.

“We’re planning on doing it in other cities,” Minter told artnet News in a phone conversation. “We want to be the propaganda wing of the resistance.”

International Artists Launch 'Hands Off Our Revolution' To Counter Rise Of Right-Wing Populism

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Anish Kapoor at the Lisson Gallery 24 March 2015 - photo courtesy film maker Laura Bushell

Over 200 leading international artists including Anish Kapoor, recently honored as Genesis Prize Laureate 2017, activist artist Marilyn Minter -- a key leader of anti-Trump protests in America, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson and more have publicly lent their names and support to the 'Hands Off Our Revolution' movement.

Top New York Artists Protested Outside Ivanka Trump's Soho Apartment Before Heading to Art Basel

Organized by artist Adam Broomberg, originally born in South Africa and now living and working in London and Berlin as a photojournalist collaborating permanently with Oliver Chanarin, the group articulates the mission statement for 'Hands Off Our Revolution' mission statement:

We are a global coalition affirming the radical nature of art. We believe that art can help counter the rising rhetoric of right-wing populism, fascism and the increasingly stark expressions of xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and unapologetic intolerance.

We know that freedom is never granted – it is won. Justice is never given – it is exacted. Both must be fought for and protected, yet their promise has seldom been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp, as at this moment.

As artists, it is our job and our duty to reimagine and reinvent social relations threatened by right-wing populist rule. It is our responsibility to stand together in solidarity. We will not go quietly. It is our role and our opportunity, using our own particular forms, private and public spaces, to engage people in thinking together and debating ideas, with clarity, openness and resilience.

Lend your own support at the bottom of website landing page. 

The collective behind 'Hands Off Our Revolution' will take action in:

A series of contemporary art exhibitions and actions that confront, head on, the rise of right-wing populism in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Exhibitions featuring critically engaged contemporary artists and taking place in central art institutions as well as alternative spaces, that will bring into public view statements, questions and reflections on the state we are in. To do what art has always endeavored: to help envision and shape the world in which we want to live.

Proceeds will go to arts & activist causes and building the coalition.

The artists movement was launched in reaction to contemporary events promoting nationalism like the Brexit vote, refugee crisis and the election of Donald Trump as president of the US.

“What is important is that it is not just seen as America’s problem, or Europe’s problem, so we are planning shows in Mexico and Lagos,” Broomberg told the Guardian. The first announcements of exhibitions will be released in March.

Protest Events Send Trump To Inauguration As We Prep For Saturday Women's March

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Protest Events Send Trump To Inauguration As We Prep For Saturday Women's March

January 19 National Mall Peace Ball

It's difficult to get coverage on pre Saturday Jan. 21 marches with the Inauguration of Donald Trump dominating Friday's coverage. A major event happened in Washington last night, one with many more celebs and performers than any Trump event. The Peace Ball was hosted at the freshly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture was organized as a progressive alternative to Trump events around the city.

Madonna As 'Statue of Liberty' By Michael Forbes Joins Marilyn Minter At Brooklyn Museum Jan. 19

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Madonna As 'Statue of Liberty' By Michael Forbes Joins Marilyn Minter At Brooklyn Museum Jan. 19

The black eye is perfect because this is how we feel. Madonna is never one to walk away from controversy, and she was quick to share this new artwork by Scottish artist Michael Forbes. The artist portrays a caricature-like image of the President-elect as 'King Kong Trump' sitting on the head of our beloved Statue of Liberty, personified by Madonna. The human rights icon is holding a sign saying 'Not My President' -- a declaration that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million Americans. 

"After Madonna posted it on Instagram my phone has been ringing repeatedly with people telling me about it," Forbes told the BBC.

(. . . }

Madonna will join artist Marilyn Minter tonight on the eve of the presidential inauguration at a SOLD OUT event at The Brooklyn Museum. 

The two fearless feminist provocateurs will talk art, culture, feminist, and the current state of affairs in America and around the world. Writes the Brooklyn Museum's website: Connecting Madonna, an artist, activist, and philanthropist, with Minter, whose work explores cultural perceptions of women, this unprecedented conversation will highlight the impact of female artists within broader culture and social change. Moderated by poet, essayist, and playwright Elizabeth Alexander and by Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Museum.

Tonight's historic event is part of A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism at the Brooklyn Museum, a yearlong series of exhibitions and programs celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

FEMEN Activist Grabs Trump's Crotch At Madrid's Statue Unveiling

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Oh dear Goddess! Donald Trump must be seething. Perhaps his children can keep the president-elect from seeing this FEMEN activist grabbing the crotch of his highness -- sorry -- his likeness unveiled today at the Museo de Cera Madrid.  FEMEN is known in the women's rights community for its topless protests 

The unnamed FEMEN member shouted "grab patriarchy by the balls," as she ran towards the statue of his highness and grabbed him by the balls.  

Denouncing Trump, 'NASTY WOMEN' Art Show Raises $50,000 for Planned Parenthood

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Millions of American women loathed Donald Trump more than they thought possible, when the president-elect interrupted Hillary Clinton in the third presidential election, saying that she was "such a nasty woman". 

Educated women, in particular, have been seeking revenge ever since -- and we won't be stopping any time soon. Taking down Planned Parenthood is a prime agenda item of the incoming Trump Administration, even though 50% of Trump's own voters don't want this critical organization supporting poor women defunded. 

Nearly 600 self-proclaimed 'NASTY WOMEN' showed their art at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, January 12-15. Over $50,000 was raised in support of Planned Parenthood, in the first stop of what will become a global tour for the show. Future stops include San Diego; Lubbock, Texas; Brussels; Memphis, Tennessee,;and Melbourne, Australia. 

After meeting its goal for Planned Parenthood, the NASTY WOMEN show donated $8,200 raised by the $20 general admission tickets in support of Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, the New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Fund, and Sister Song. 

Free Downloads For The Women's March In DC On Jan. 21 Available From The Amplifier Foundation

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Free Downloads For The Women's March In DC On Jan. 21 Available From The Amplifier Foundation

All reports are that the goal of delivering as many as 200,000 Americans congregating to support The Women's March will be met, and AOC will track the march and related events all week. We will not cover details of the Trump inauguration or any related events unless they are pertinent to women's rights.

The Amplifier Foundation -- an art machine dedicated to social change -- is supporting the march with free wallpaper downloads available here. Eight poster designs by artists who identify as female will be printed and distributed free to march participants.

Donald Trump Calls Meryl Streep An 'Overrated Actress' and 'Hillary Flunky'

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President-elect Donald Trump hit back at esteemed actor Meryl Streep who criticized him in her acceptance speech for her lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes in Los Angeles last night.

"She is a Hillary flunky who lost big," Trump tweeted, as he insisted once again that he never mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski at a South Carolina rally in November of last year.

Trump's denial that he never imitated Kovaleski, who has a congenital joint condition, is absurd and a most concerning trait in a future president. As is the reality with most of Trump's disparaging antics that play to his audience, they are obvious and highly-documented in film of his own behavior. Trump's denial is nothing more than a backtracking of reality, and thinking people who are fact-based are not humiliated into submission over Donald Trump and his outlandish arrogance that what we saw before our very eyes is not the truth.

This deeply troubling trait of Trump's tendency to lie about reality may play well with his voters -- although many have criticized this trait -- but it doesn't play well with me or with fearless people like Meryl Streep.

President-elect Trump is now facing a nation of Americans, propelled to office by three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in a nation where about one in four eligible voters actually supported him. This is no mandate of citizen admiration of Trump's despicable, deplorable inability to accept responsibility for his own actions. It's the sign of a very weak, insecure personality.

Read more about Meryl Streep's powerful speech that denounces the president-elect.

Trump Honored In China As Gilded, Giant Rooster Statue; Will A Golden Goose Statue Come To Wall Street?

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We don't follow Donald Trump on Twitter, so there's no word on whether or not the president-elect believes that the giant rooster sculpture outside a shopping mall in Taiyuan, China accurately captures all his self-perceived grandeur. The 23-ft statue celebrates the upcoming Year of the Rooster in the Chinese lunar calendar.

Everyday Chinese citizens believe that the Trump rooster helps to lighten up tensions between China and America, as expressed at major rallies by Donald Trump throughout the presidential campaign.

The New York Times writes:

Global Times, a state-run tabloid, said on Tuesday that onlookers in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, had praised the statue as a “perfect blend of Chinese and Western cultures.”
“It’s not bad looking,” Zhang Guoqiang, an employee at the Yihui Japanese Restaurant at the North America N1 Art Shopping Center, where the statue is, said by telephone on Thursday.

The always-entrepreneurial Chinese have inflatable 'Trump chicken' replicas on sale at online shaopping website Taobao. The 32-foot version is advertised for $1,725.

Artist Casey Latiolais, based in Seattle, says the response to his artwork has been outstanding. We share another Trump gem from Casey's Behance page.

ArtNet: The 10 Best Stories on Art and Politics of 2016

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ArtNet: The 10 Best Stories on Art and Politics of 2016 Read On

Are artists increasingly irrelevant in the age of Trump? Or are they needed more than ever? What does the art world have to do as it faces the global growth of nationalism and votes like Brexit? Did Ai Weiwei nit a new low by "crassly recreating a photo of the infamous drowned Syrian boy toddler? What did the 'Panama papers' teach us about "art's role in the lives of the tax-dodging superrich? ArtNet weighs in with their best thinking. 

New World Design's Flying Pigs on Parade: A Golden Pig Folly Proposed For Chicago

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President-elect Donald J. Trump notoriously called comedian Rosie O’Donnell a “fat pig” in a long-running feud. He mocked Miss Universe Alicia Machado by dubbing her “Miss Piggy.”

Now, a Chicago architectural firm wants to celebrate Trump's love of pigs by blotting out the real estate developer -- now president of the United States and TIME magazine's person of the year - with a series of floating golden swine floating in front of his name.

New World Design‘s Flying Pigs on Parade: a Chicago River Folly (2016) proposes four pig-shaped golden balloons -- one for each year of the Trump presidency --  tethered to buoys in the Chicago River. The golden pigs will float in such a way that they obscure The Donald’s name, emblazoned on the structure in 20-foot-high lettering.