Saint Hoax is a pseudonymous Syrian artist, [1] satirist and socio-political activist. They use various mediums to subversively depict political and popular figures. They are also known for taking Disney characters out of context and using them for social awareness. [2]
In 2014, Saint Hoax published their campaign Happy Never After. The artist used images of Disney princesses to spread awareness about domestic violence. [3] The princesses were illustrated with bruises on their faces and a slogan that read "When did he stop treating you like a princess?" accompanied the visuals. Hours after the posters were published on the artist's website, the campaign went viral. [4] Happy Never After became one of the most shared domestic violence campaign. In November 2014, it was used as the official anti-domestic violence campaign in Amsterdam.
Saint Hoax uses social media, particularly Instagram, as their main platform. They’re mostly known for posting edited videos and images that satirize political and pop cultural figures. [5] They covered the 2021 Met Gala as a "Meme Correspondent." [6]
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. As of 2014, Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region and the thirteenth-largest in the Arab world. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coast. Beirut has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world.
An Internet meme, or simply meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms, such as YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations. Characteristics of memes include their susceptibility to parody, their use of intertextuality, their propagation in a viral pattern, and their evolution over time. The name is from the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972.
S.A. Bachman is an American artist, advocate and educator. She is the co-founder of the artist-activist collaboratives, Think Again and Louder Than Words. Her art practice examines the insidiousness of sexism, white privilege and conformity as well as how the mass media structures conceptions of race, class and gender. Bachman was a Senior Lecturer at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston from 1991-2011 and a Senior Lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles from 2009-2014. She resides in Los Angeles.
Brett Reichman is an American painter and educator. He was a professor at the San Francisco Art Institute where he taught both in the graduate and undergraduate programs. His work came to fruition in the late 1980s out of cultural activism that addressed the AIDS epidemic and gay identity politics and was curated into early exhibitions that acknowledged those formative issues. These exhibitions included Situation: Perspectives on Work by Lesbian and Gay Artists at New Langton Arts in San Francisco, The Anti-Masculine at the Kim Light Gallery in Los Angeles, Beyond Loss at the Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, D.C, and In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice at the Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California. However, after legislation passed in 1989 that restricted federal funding for art dealing with homosexuality and AIDS, artists like Reichman approached their themes subtly. His And the Spell Was Broken Somewhere Over the Rainbow is embellished with colors of the rainbow and presents three clocks. It references Oz while actually indirectly addressing the new reality that San Francisco could no longer be viewed as a land of enchantment due to the AIDS crisis. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he has lived and worked in San Francisco since 1984.
This Man is a conceptual art project and hoax created by Italian sociologist and marketer Andrea Natella. In 2008, Natella created a website called "Ever Dream This Man?" describing a supposed mysterious individual who has reportedly appeared in the dreams of numerous people around the world since 2006.
Women in Syria are active participants in social, economic and political factions of Syrian society. They constitute 49.9% of Syria's population. According to World Bank data from 2021, there are around 10.6 million women in Syria. However, Syrian women and girls still experience challenges, especially since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. They suffer from discrimination, lack of access to suitable healthcare and challenges precipitated by wartime violence.
Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the term viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. This concept has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population.
Pizza Rat is an internet meme based around a viral video of a brown rat carrying a slice of pizza down the steps of a New York City Subway station in Manhattan. The video was first uploaded to Instagram on September 21, 2015, and a copy was uploaded to YouTube later. As of September 2023, the YouTube video has more than 12.35 million views.
Bernie Sanders' Dank Meme Stash is a Facebook group where members previously shared and discussed Internet memes relating to American politician and United States senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Sanders was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as well as the 2020 U.S. presidential election. This page is still active on Facebook with over 273,000 followers as of 2023.
Arev Petrosyan, is an Armenian artist. Honored artist of the Republic of Armenia (2015).
Abdul Rahman Katanani is a Palestinian sculptor. He was born and living in Sabra refugee camp near Beirut, Lebanon. Katanani is a third generation Palestinian refugee; his grandparents left Yazour—a small town now called Azor—in Jaffa during the 1948 Palestinian exodus.
Faia Younan is a Syrian-Assyrian singer, considered the first Middle Eastern artist ever to crowdfund her debut.
Chiang Yu-yi, professionally known as John Yuyi, is a Taiwanese visual artist. Her practice explores aspects of the social media, photography, and the post internet. She lives and works in Taipei and New York City.
Nada Sehnaoui is a visual artist and political activist. Her artworks, spanning painting, mixed media works, sculpture and installations, have been widely exhibited internationally, and have been featured in the press and print publications worldwide.
Woman yelling at a cat is an Internet meme first used in a post by Twitter user @MISSINGEGIRL on May 1, 2019. It juxtaposes two images: on the left, a screen capture of "Malibu Beach Party from Hell", an episode from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, depicting cast member Taylor Armstrong crying and pointing ; and a picture uploaded to Tumblr in June 2018, depicting a cat from Ottawa, Ontario, Smudge, sitting at a dinner table behind a salad with a seemingly confused expression.
Mimikama is a fact-checking site based in Austria since 2011. It is published in the German language and is anti-abuse.
Ali Eyal, Is an Iraqi visual artist and he's currently based in Los Angeles who works internationally. His work explores the complex relationships between personal history, transitory memories, politics & identity using different media, primarily based in the medium of painting, and further transformed through other media - such as installations art, photography, text and video.
Khadija Baker is a Syrian Kurdish and Canadian artist and performer who lives in Montreal.
Saint Javelin is an Internet meme and fictional character depicted in a religious icon style as a saint-like figure cradling a modern weapon used in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank weapon. The meme was created by Christian Borys during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and became famous around the world, eventually resulting in other similar memes. The meme boosted morale and was used in merchandise products, resulting in more than a million dollars raised for humanitarian charities assisting Ukraine.