It’s often implied that violent art means something sinister about its creator – most recently, in news stories about ‘scary’ kids’ drawings of death. But the history of modern art suggests otherwise.
Muslim pilgrims go through passport control in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on June 5, 2022, prior to the annual Hajj pilgrimage in the holy city of Mecca.
Amer Hilabi/AFP via Getty Images
A passport from the United Arab Emirates will get you into far more destinations than one from Afghanistan. Gaps like this have big implications for people’s ability to travel, reside and work.
A piece called ‘The Last Stand’ by David Ellingsen.
(David Ellingsen)
Climate artists can offer a vision of tangible networks, activities, behaviours and lifestyles that, rather than damaging the planet, support planetary — and personal — health and well-being.
Still from Human Flow, directed by Ai Weiwei.
IMDB/Amazon Studios
Artists have long tackled global issues, from war to human rights. While Picasso’s celebrated Guernica may not have stopped the Spanish Civil War (or any war), art still holds value, as witness and as truth teller.
Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey, 2017, reinforced PVC with aluminium frame, 3 x 60 x 6m.
Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Ai Weiwei Studio
The 21st Sydney Biennale is the first to be directed by a curator of non-Western heritage. While the number of artists is modest, lost quantity is made up by quality.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Prince Harry watch wheelchair basketball at the Invictus Games in Toronto on Friday, Sept. 29. Obama spoke earlier in Toronto about the importance of global citizenship.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Donovan
The world needs to cultivate a global citizenship sensibility, particularly in the education of our university and college students, to ensure the harmonious survival of planet Earth.
Weiwei has taken Denmark to task for its asylum-seeker policy. Australia, for now, is another issue.
EPA/Filip Singer
Weiwei has taken Denmark to task for its asylum-seeker policy. Given Australia’s decision to return 267 asylum seekers to Nauru, he should surely consider pulling his current Melbourne exhibition.
The NGV’s summer exhibition is curated to create a dialogue between Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol, and this conversation operates on multiple levels on a variety of themes, and across time and space.
A standard trope suggests this is a war between art and commerce – it isn’t.
EPA/ Facundo Arrizabalaga
Many voices have united in claiming the toy giant Lego is censoring the provocative Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. There are so many things wrong with those arguments it’s hard to know where to begin.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne