Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.
Aesthetica Magazine is an international art and culture magazine, founded in 2002. Published bi-monthly, it covers contemporary art from around the world, across visual arts, photography, architecture, fashion, and design. It has a readership of over 500,000 with national and international distribution.
Sandra Alland is a Glasgow-based Scottish-Canadian writer, interdisciplinary artist, small press publisher, performer, filmmaker, and curator. Alland's work focuses on social justice, language, humour, and experimental forms.
Olivia Louvel is a French-born British sound artist whose work draws on voice, computer music and digital narrative. The Sculptor Speaks, a resounding of a 1961 tape of Barbara Hepworth's voice, was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in the Sound Art category at the Ivors Composer Awards 2020.
The Voice Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit advocacy group focused on promoting freedom of artistic expression as an agent of social change. The project was founded in 2009 as a response to the Lord's Resistance Army Insurgency in Northern Uganda, but has since expanded programs into Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Cuba, and the United States.
Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that began during the early 1990s within the United States in Olympia, Washington and the greater Pacific Northwest and has expanded to at least 26 other countries. Riot grrrl is a subcultural movement that combines feminism, punk music, and politics. It is often associated with third-wave feminism, which is sometimes seen as having grown out of the riot grrrl movement and has recently been seen in fourth-wave feminist punk music that rose in the 2010s. The genre has also been described as coming out of indie rock, with the punk scene serving as an inspiration for a movement in which women could express themselves the same way men have been doing all along.
Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist protest and performance art group based in Moscow that became popular for its provocative punk rock music which later turned into a more accessible style. Founded in August 2011, it has had a membership of approximately 11 women. The group staged unauthorized, provocative guerrilla gigs in public places. These performances were filmed as music videos and posted on the internet. The group's lyrical themes included feminism, LGBT rights, opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his policies, and Putin's links to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Haleh Jamali is an Iranian artist currently living and working in Scotland. She works with a wide range of media and techniques that include painting, photography, installation, video, and performance. She completed her Bachelors of Arts in Painting at the College of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, in 2005. In 2007, she received her MA in Art and Media Practice from the University of Westminster, London. Her works focus on the hidden layers beneath the visible by using the media of painting and installation.
Nadya (Nadezhda) Andreyevna Tolokonnikova, is a Russian musician, conceptual artist, and political activist. She is a founding member of the feminist group Pussy Riot, and has a history of political activism with the street art group Voina. On August 17, 2012, she was arrested for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" after a performance in Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and was ultimately sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On December 23, 2013, she was released early with another Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina under a newly passed amnesty bill dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution.
Maria Vladimirovna "Masha" Alyokhina is a Russian political activist. She is a member of the anti-Putinist punk rock group Pussy Riot.
Pyotr Yurievich Verzilov is a Russian-Canadian artist and activist who came to prominence as the unofficial spokesperson of the band Pussy Riot when he was arrested and jailed by the Russian state in 2012. Verzilov was married to Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
The LennonOno Grant for Peace is an award presented by artist and peace activist Yoko Ono. The grant, a sum of $50,000, has been awarded biennially to people and organisations chosen by Ono herself since 2002, in honour of Ono's late husband John Lennon.
Whitney Osborn McVeigh is an American multimedia artist living and working in London. Born in New York City, she grew up in London from the age of seven.
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is a 2013 documentary film by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin. The film follows the court cases on the Russian feminist/anti-Putinist punk-rock protest group Pussy Riot. Directed by Lerner and Pozdorovkin, the film featured publicly available footage of the court proceedings and interviews with the families of the band members, but no interviews with the band members themselves.
The Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) is an international film festival which takes place annually in York, England, at the beginning of November. Founded in 2011, it is a celebration of independent film from around the world, and an outlet for supporting and championing filmmaking. With over 400 films screenings and 100 industry events, ASFF is one of the UK's key film festivals.
Caroline McNairn was a Scottish figurative painter.
Amy Hughes, also known as Amy V. Hughes, is a British-born New York City-based contemporary painter. She is best known for the portrait painting of her late grandfather and for her feminist take on the relationships between body and mind.
Sekai Machache is a visual artist and curator who lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and works internationally. She works primarily in photography and seeks to interrogate the notion of self.
Poulomi Basu is an Indian artist, documentary photographer and activist, much of whose work addresses the normalisation of violence against marginalised women.
