Art Of Politics

[artofpolitics]

Straight (2008-12) 38 tons of steel rebar. Image: ArtObserver.com.

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Over 5,000 children were killed at school, schools that collapsed because of shoddy construction permitted by corrupt officials. 

After the government refused to release the names of the dead, Ai Weiwei formed a citizens’ commission, volunteers, including parents, who investigated the disaster and published their findings, including the names of the dead children and details about the corruption.

The government, meanwhile, removed the faulty steel rebar from ruins of the collapsed schools and sold it for recycling. And Ai Weiwei bought it—150 tons of it, twisted evidence of the corruption and the cover-up. He then organized a shop where the steel bars were straightened.

Description edited from Jon Wiener's 'Ai Weiwei: Political Art at the Venice Biennale'.

[artofpolitics]

If this is a man, Primo Levi

"You who live safe

In your warm houses,

You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man

Who works in the mud

Who does not know peace

Who fights for a scrap of bread

Who dies because of a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman,

Without hair and without name

With no more strength to remember,

Her eyes empty and her womb cold

Like a frog in winter.

Meditate that this came about:

I commend these words to you.

Carve them in your hearts

At home, in the street,

Going to bed, rising;

Repeat them to your children,

Or may your house fall apart,

May illness impede you,

May your children turn their faces from you."

[artofpolitics]

Year in Photographs, UNICEF, 2011.

The photo above shows Somali refugees in a dust storm at a camp in Kenya. The current drought crisis threatens 10 million people in the Horn of Africa.

UNICEF photography advocates for the world’s most vulnerable children, offering visual evidence in support of children’s rights. See the full set: here. You can also follow UNICEF on Tumblr: here.

[artofpolitics]

Untitled, Suleiman Mansour, 2005, Ramallah. Source.

[artofpolitics]

'Raising a flag over the Reichstag', Yevgeny Khaldei, Berlin, 2 May 1945.

Behind the incredible power of this image is a deeper story of the photographer and the juxtaposition of propaganda and reality. This is a must read!

[artofpolitics]

'VOTA', Emilio Morenatti, 2011. In the lead up to the Spanish elections - fake posters showing Spanish bank presidents Angel Ron, Pedro Guerrero, Francisco Gonzalez, Emilio Botin, Jose Maria Arias y Antonio Basagoiti. Source.

[artofpolitics]

'Massacre in Korea', Picasso, 1951

[artofpolitics]

'Don’t let war affect the lives of children', @UNICEF, 2005, Belgium. Ad created alongside TV ad spot to highlight the 300,000 child soldiers globally and that half of the 3.6 million killed in wars since 1990 are children.

[artofpolitics]

'Sheku', 1998, Giacomo Pirozzi, Sierra Leone. Sheku, aged 17 in Waterloo camp, Sierra Leone who lost both hands to rebels’ machetes. Source.

[artofpolitics]

'Flower Power', Bernie Boston, 1967. Source

[artofpolitics]

Rosa Parks, Bettmann, 1956. Source

[artofpolitics]

Ghulam Haider, Stephanie Sinclair, 2007, Afghanistan Mohammed, 40 years old and Ghulam, 11. Asked what she felt on the day of her engagement she replied: “Nothing, I do not know this man. What am I supposed to feel?”

Source

[artofpolitics]

'Vulture and Child' (in Sudan), Kevin Carter, 1993

[artofpolitics]

'A social force, able to control those in power', 2011, Gdańsk. Source. Today is the anniversary of the day in 1982, that the government banned the Solidarity Movement in Poland.

[artofpolitics]

'Migrant Mother', Dorothea Lange, 1936, USA. Source

[artofpolitics]

'Thanks to Mugabe this money is wallpaper', The Zimbabwean (by Sostav Agency), 2009, Zimbabwe. See more: Here

[artofpolitics]

You Have Struck a Rock, Medu Art Ensemble, 1981. South Africa. Source: Art Tatler. This poster was published around the time Medu Art Ensemble posters were banned by the South African Government. This year the group are being entered in to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.