social justice – Art Spiel

July 29, 2026July 28, 2026, by Adria Arch

America, Unfinished?! at WaterFire Arts Center

America, Unfinished?!, a national exhibit at WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, RI, features the work of 80 artists from 13 states and territories. I visited the 15,000-square-foot former rubber factory on a hot July day. The light-filled space is several stories high and could dwarf almost anything smaller than a jet, so it took me a while to find my bearings and focus on the work.

May 20, 2026May 20, 2026, by Jessica Aguilar

Art Seen Philadelphia: Spring 2026

HIGHLIGHTS

During this season, art spaces across Philadelphia step up to demonstrate the voices of underrepresented communities as the city prepares to celebrate the semi-quincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While institutions and sports fans are celebrating, artists take this moment to reflect on America’s 250 years, and how definitions of liberty, equality, and justice have evolved beyond what the Founding Fathers drafted.

July 2, 2025July 1, 2025, by Anna Shukeylo

Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at Montclair Art Museum

Installation view. Photographer Peter Jacobs

Nanette Carter: A Question of Balance at the Montclair Art Museum is an extensive survey of 46 works from throughout the artist’s career curated by Mary Birmingham. Carter is known for her boundless abstractions and innovative works on mylar. This long-awaited show reflects Carter’s long history with the museum, the community, and the town itself. As one enters the show, the first piece is a video titled The Weight from the pandemic days, where Carter films herself balancing various pieces of her two-dimensional painting as more pieces get “stacked” onto the main mass. Setting the mood for the show, it not only introduces Nanette Carter in flesh but also important themes she has been working on throughout her career.

September 11, 2024October 6, 2024, by Yasmeen Abdallah

Art Spiel Picks: Governors Island in September 2024

HIGHLIGHTS

A room with a large chess board

Description automatically generated — Dario Mohr’s Don’t Forget to Check. Image by Yasmeen Abdallah

Themes of searching and connection to ancestors through practice, ritual, and persistence are intertwined through work that depicts aspects of migration, objecthood, and the complexities of humanity itself. The winds moving across the island dictate the mood as we bow and sway through graceful installations in deeply resonant forms at LMCC Art Center and Artcrawl Harlem.

November 17, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Linda Kuo & Dancers Unlimited

Grantee of Brooklyn Arts Fund

Project Profile: Edible Tales

Dancers Unlimited members at Waikalua fishpond in Hawai’i. Photo credit: Jordan Medeiros

Brooklyn Arts Council announced in March 2022 an allocation of over $1.3 million to 238 Brooklyn-based artists and cultural organizations. This year marks the highest number of grantees and awardees as well as the largest amount of funding BAC has ever distributed. Art Spiel in collaboration with Brooklyn Arts Council features some artists who received a Brooklyn Arts Fund, Local Arts Support, and/or Creative Equations Fund grant in 2022.

August 13, 2022December 30, 2022, by Art Spiel

Animal Well Being at the Swimming Hole Foundation Residency

In conversation with the artists

The barn studio with artists (left to right) Rick Klauber, Sky Pape, Nancy Davidson, Lyn Godley, Rebecca Welz, and David Provan, 7/23/2022. Photo courtesy of John White.

The Swimming Hole Foundation offers residencies to groups of artists, designers and educators who are exploring environmental and social justice through collaborative work. In Animal Well Being artists Nancy Davidson, Lyn Godley, Rick Klauber, Sky Pape, David Provan, and Rebecca Welz referenced the theme of birds in their collaborative project. The project was open to the public Saturday, July 23rd, 2022.

March 14, 2022January 8, 2022, by Jenny Blazing

Journey Toward a Turning Point

A picture containing text

Description automatically generated — *Blazing, California Dreamin’,* acrylic painting incorporating original hand-painted paper on stretched canvas, 30”x 40

Over the past decade, we have witnessed a proliferation of climate-related disasters across the world. Storms have become stronger, wildfires more intense. Sea ice is melting at a higher rate as the earth grows hotter. Each of these problems alone endangers human welfare. Together, they represent an existential threat. Scientists often describe our position as nearing a “tipping point” at which we teeter at the precipice of an irreversible cascade of ecosystem collapse. My new collaboration with fellow artist Carin Walsh presents a different view of our role in this crisis. It serves as a reminder that we are not passive observers of this disaster, but active agents with the ability to change course and build a safer and healthier future. Our message is that while the climate is approaching a tipping point, our society is at a turning point. We have the power to choose whether we will continue on our current path, or whether we will turn to embrace the measures necessary to reverse climate change.

January 14, 2022November 2, 2022, by Casey Curry

Reflections on Humanity Is Not a Spectator Sport

In Dialogue with Caron Tabb

*Caron Tabb, Justice Vessels: Tzedakah Box For Tina (2021), Scorched tree branches, stainless steel, wool roving, thread, 16 x 16 x 22 inches. Photo credit Julia Featheringill.*

In Humanity Is Not A Spectator Sport, on view at Beacon Gallery in Boston from November 5th 2021 through January 17th, 2022 (sponsored in conjunction with JArts), Caron Tabb draws upon her expertise in multiple media to create works meant to provoke and inspire. She leans into the tensions that have characterized the recent past to question her role and culpability as a White woman; where inaction itself is a statement. The exhibition offers an intimately visual response to Tabb’s personal reckoning along with a wealth of programming focused on sparking difficult conversations about race and privilege as well as presenting opportunities to take action. As the exhibition entered its final weeks, I asked Tabb to reflect on some of the conversations the exhibition inspired.

December 20, 2021December 20, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Drawing a Line at Five Myles

A picture containing ceiling, indoor, wall, room

Description automatically generated — Installation view

A line drawing is a dot that went for a walk,

-Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook

From line drawings and cutouts to wall reliefs and sculptures, lines shift forms throughout the group exhibition Drawing a Line at Five Myles. Curator Klaudia Ofwona Draber says she was inspired by the gallery founder Hanne Tierney’s vision to organize a drawing exhibition. Ofwona Draber’s interest in social justice and post-colonialism guided her choice of artists as well as the theme of the exhibition – drawing a line as an action of drawing boundaries, whether to protect personal boundaries in the quietude of one’s own home, or at the heart of a political conflict. “By drawing a line, we protect ourselves, our families and our communities from the violence and inequalities that are happening around us,” says Ofwona Draber.

April 13, 2021November 2, 2022, by Annabel Keenan

Farideh Sakhaeifar: You Are in the War Zone

Macintosh HD:Users:annamikaela:Downloads:You are in the war zone - 05.jpeg — Farideh Sakhaeifar, You are in the war zone., 2016-17. Gelatine Silver Print, 8 x 10 inches

In her latest solo exhibition at New York’s Trotter&Sholer gallery, Iranian artist Farideh Sakhaeifar invites the viewer to reflect on the human experiences that connect us all. You are in the war zone confronts conflict, war, and social injustice head-on. Presented in partnership with the non-profit arts organization KODA, and curated by Klaudia Ofwona-Draber, the exhibition covers Sakhaeifar’s rich artistic practice, from her performance pieces to her sculptures to her hand and digitally manipulated photographs made over a seven year period. The works in the show underscore the artist’s strong critique of US foreign policy and Western portrayal of war in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as her impactful representations of shared experiences, the subjectivity of the media, and the inevitable distortion of memories and information over time.