Before I Die...

Candy Chang's installation Before I Die transforms neglected spaces into constructive ones where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us. With help from friends and neighbors, Candy turned the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood into a giant chalkboard where they can express their wishes and dreams.

Once the wall is filled, the board is washed down and the neighbourhood starts with a clean slate again. Responses were documented and some will be included in a book.

The response has been overwhelming. Candy hopes that the project will continue to expand to other cities and grow for years to come. She plans to create a kit with a how-to guide and large one-column stencil that will make it easy to reproduce.

The answers record and evoke a range of emotions. Some seem funny or trivial; others are meaningful and touching. Some seem to be melancholy or regretful. Some seem unrealistic, and others point out the value of the things we take for granted.

Before I Die is a perfect example of how art can work with the design of public spaces to create better interaction between the residents of communities, making them better places to live.

Here's the link to her site: http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/

Antti Laitinen - Primal Dreams

Antti Latinen's website

The work of Finnish artist Antti Laitinen contains a bittersweet notion of primal origins we can never return to. This takes the form of performances which are documented through photographs, videos or objects. His work culminates as modest or impermanent objects, or often only in his documentation - the records of his performances.

In 'Bare Necessities', Antti lived in the forest for four days without food, clothes or water and documented his experience. In Laitinen’s work, the ideals of going ‘back to nature’ are childish, but not naïve. He pushes his limits, physical and mental.

In 'It’s My Island' (2007), Laitinen builds his own island in the Baltic Sea by dragging two hundred sand bags into the water over a period of three months – using nothing but a spade, sand and sacks. Individually filling each of the bags with sand, Laitinen painstakingly drags each bag one by one into the sea, braving the harsh waves and conditions until the island starts to appear over the water. As with much of Laitinen's work, he documents the event with video.

Untitled (2004) consists of three stones that Laitinen found after digging with a spade first for seven minutes, then for seven hours, and finally for seven days.

This project contains the same attitude as his video documented performances - determination and consistency, but with an element of farce. Laitinen executes his projects with the solemnity that a child has at play.

He says of his work: “It is more important to struggle for your dreams than succeeding in them.”

Why We Make Art

An interesting interview

why we make art

Pieter Hugo - The Hyena and Other Men

‘The Hyena & Other Men’ is a series by South African photographer Pieter Hugo (b. 1976, Johannesburg). Pieter Hugo travelled twice to Nigeria (in 2005 and 2007) to follow a legendary group of itinerant street artists known as the Hyena Men. These men earn their money by performing on the streets with hyenas, pythons and baboons, and selling traditional medicines.

In his portraits Hugo captures the complex and often paradoxical partnerships between the animals and their masters. There is tension between domination and submission, nature and culture, and between traditional and modern; relationships ranging from loving to cruel and aggressive.

Here's a link to the images on his website, where you can also see and read about his other projects: http://www.pieterhugo.com/the-hyena-other-men/

James Mollison - Where Children Sleep

Photographer James Mollison's fascinating and thought-provoking new book 'Where Children Sleep' tells the diverse stories of children around the world, through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms. Inspired by the quote "all children are born equal" Mollison has created a collection of photographs which proves this statement to be untrue. Mollison documents the personal spaces of kids around the world, from the middle-class and prosperous to the strikingly impoverished.

The Children are all between 4-17 but their backgrounds and futures couldn't be more different. There is Bilal, the Bedouin shepheard boy who sleeps with his father's heard of goats; Kaya in Tokyo whose proud mother spends $1,000 per month on her dresses; Indira, a Nepalese girl who has worked in a granite quarry since she was three years old and Ankhohxet, the Kraho boy who sleeps on the floor of a hut in the Amazon.

Over the course of four years, Mollison captured more than a hundred images of children and their bedrooms, with support from independent organization Save the Children. Born in Kenya and raised in England, the artist lives and works in Italy, with his own multicultural upbringing inspiring this moving collection of photos spanning countries as diverse as Senegal, Lesotho, Nepal, China, India, Brazil, and the United States.

During the project Mollison thought about his own childhood experiences: "When asked to come up with an idea for engaging with children's rights, I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was. it occurred to me that a way to address some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children would be to look at the bedrooms of children in all kinds of different circumstances."

"I hope this book will help children think about inequality, within and between societies around the world," says Mollison in his introduction, "and perhaps start to figure out how, in their own lives, they may respond."





Indira, a Nepalese girl who has worked in a granite quarry since she was three years old

Jasmine the beauty pagent princess


Bilal, a Bedouin boy who sleeps with his father's heard of goats


Four-year-old Kaya lives in an apartment in Tokyo, Japan. Her mother spends $1,000 per month on her dresses.


Four-year-old Jivan lives in a skyscraper in Brooklyn, New York, USA


Seventeen-year-old 'X' lives in a 'favela' in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil


Eight-year-old Harrison lives in a mansion in New Jersey, USA


This unnamed four-year-old boy lives on the outskirts of Rome, Italy. He and his family all sleep on the mattress in the photograph


Fifteen-year-old Risa lives in a teahouse in Kyoto, Japan


Fourteen-year-old Rhiannon lives in Darvel, Scotland