suturezone

Swelling Rage | Collage Artists

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:18:04 GMT

Photosynthesis Magazine re-emerges, more on fire than ever. We are ENRAGED.

There is a particular kind of rage that gathers. It festers. It swells beneath the skin like pressure before a storm.

This call is a collage-only series of publications of Photosynthesis Magazine dedicated to that slow, collective boil against fascism, capitalism, colonial violence, carceral systems, medical neglect, ecological collapse, and the many architectures of domination that shape our lives.

This series of issues is explicitly political.

We are seeking work rooted in leftist, anarchist, abolitionist, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, decolonial, queer, trans, disabled, and collective liberation frameworks.

We want work that tears, reassembles, interrupts, and refuses. Show us the fracture lines. Show us propaganda dismantled and reconfigured.

Show us grief metabolised into action.

Show us what happens when rage becomes infrastructure instead of implosion.

Collage is inherently subversive.

It rejects purity, originality myths, and singular authorship. It steals from the master’s archive and makes something unruly from its ruins.

We are accepting physical or digital collage only (cut paper, zine aesthetics, Xerox distortion, archival disruption, assemblage scanned flat, etc.).

No paintings, no photography alone, no illustration alone — collage must be the primary method and conceptual anchor.

We especially encourage submissions from artists who are multiply marginalised, chronically ill, disabled, trans, intersex, undocumented, incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, low-income, and otherwise systemically excluded.

Rage is often policed most heavily in our bodies.

This publication is not interested in respectability. It is interested in rupture.

Feel free to note these intersectional identities in your descriptions if you like. You are welcome to use a pseudonym if you like.

Multiple issues will be assembled throughout 2026, with the final number expected to be once every other month or quarterly, depending on submissions.

Each issue will have its own title reflecting the specific curation of works that will be in the issue.

This is not a space for neutrality. This is a space for swelling rage.

Selected artists will be included in one of the 4-6 issues of the magazine for 2026

Benefits:

Artists will receive a digital copy of the published work

Credit lines and description of the artwork will accompany images in the issue

We will provide promotion via Photosynthesis Magazine's growing social media (350~)

LINK: ________

Ellie Goodliffe

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

united kingdom

Distress is rarely a clean break; it is a misalignment. By layering misregistered RGB channels and abrasive textures, this piece captures the experience of dissociation—the feeling of being 'out of phase' with one’s own reality. The vertical tears suggest a breakdown in the transmission of consciousness, where the individual becomes a ghost in their own machinery. The sensory overload creates an anxiety I believe we all feel from time to time.

Website: www.ellie-goodliffe-artists-portfolio.com

Gongsan Kim

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

uSA

North Korea has endured a hereditary dictatorship for three generations. For over seventy-five years, countless people have been unjustly sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands were cast into political prison camps—into cold pits without names or graves—and even today more than 120,000 are believed to remain imprisoned, living in inhuman conditions.

Severe food shortages drive many North Korean women to cross into China in search of survival. There, many are deceived by traffickers and sold into sexual slavery, their numbers estimated in the tens of thousands. Fear silences them; if discovered by Chinese authorities, they are forcibly returned and face brutal punishment.

My work is ritualistic, created to speak healing to wounded spirits and to pray for the eradication of the roots of their sorrow. Carrying their cries within me, I burn and burn, reducing form and color to their most essential elements—until freedom and human rights are restored.

Website: http://www.gongsankim.com

Kenneth Henckel

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Denmark

Animal behavior: Our animalistic behavior comes to the surface when the intention is to occupy new territory or defend what we have. The vultures wait patiently for the victims that may be. Stop those bloody wars!

Wolf in sheep´s clothing: Many politicians often say what people want to hear, but in reality they have other opinions that are not so appealing. It is just a facade they try to maintain in the face of a possible press attack, as I have illustrated here in my painting.

Website: https://ken651.wixsite.com/henckel

Sascha Dirk Holzmann

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Germany

As I am very interested in politics, I try to express my political view in my artworks. As a self-taught artist, I developed my own distinctive style called Sonic Synthography™ (simultaneity of light and resonance). I create artworks that combine visual and sonic elements into a unified, multisensory experience. Viewers are invited not only to see but also to listen, opening a second dimension of perception. By merging sound and image, I aim to dissolve boundaries between senses and encourage reflection.

Every artwork is a combination of a picture and a relating song to expand the feelings dealing with the artwork:

For "The Collapse Machine": https://suno.com/s/WA544MBe2QgAUmFS

For "Operation Epstein Fury": https://suno.com/s/f4No0KcYBiGyprOG

Website: https://www.sonicsynthography.art/

Raymond Gorissen

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Belgium

Keep supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia's barbaric invasion. Support the resistance against senseless violence and the delusions of an authoritarian madman, the destruction of the culture and the continued suffering of the Ukrainian people.

Website: https://reymo.eu/works

Justice Plunkett

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

USA

‘’Finding Justice’’ came about after Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January 2026. His death served as a reminder that Justice can be fragile, and it’s essential to keep asking tough questions about humanity, responsibility, and protecting life.

Social: @finding.justice1

Vannie Aurin Pavelski da Gama

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Canada

Both paintings are part of the 2025 trilogy Gestes. The Gesture of Contemplation critiques Western opacity toward contemporary genocides. A figure reads the 2022 Brazilian edition of Gaza, Land of Poetry, while seventeen butterfly species native to Gaza—painted at natural scale after ecological research—symbolize the seventeen young poets whose work persisted despite global apathy.

The first work, A Gesture of Insufficiency, shifts to the lived reality of loss. The adult figure perceives danger where light enters the scene, while a child focuses on surrounding cultural details that sustain a fragile sense of possibility. Butterflies reappear as carriers of memory, joined by Palestinian flora and other semiotic references to the conflict. Together, these two acts expose the limits of passive observation and the urgency of acknowledging every life and generation threatened by both hard and soft powers of the war.

Website: https://www.vanniegama.art/

Zeni Ballazhi

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Kosovo

Zeni Ballazhi bases his interest in art on different experiences of contemporary art such as: painting, combined techniques, design, print, readymade, installation, video... and the presentation of all new multimedia techniques of visual art. In this sphere of research the new cultural and artistic heritage have been included, advanced in contemporary, modern creation and visual technique, i.e. in a new level of discussion on conceptual art today.

The various media of expression are just his tool for visualization of the conceptual ideas of self-reflection, whereas the visual motif in the conceptual discourse becomes meta-language or visual text. Conceptual art is reflectional and analytical to the society or to the system of art and is based on specific procedures in the creation of the artwork, while the artist with the presentation of visual language promotes his own views as general introspection.

Zeni Ballazhi with paraphrases and discourses of philosophy and contemporary art seeks new ways to present the phenomena of today and the reality. He uses art to open the problems in art and society, but also the artistic and social system that prevails in the region and the world. The personal stories and experiences that are actually stories and experiences of others, receive meta-visual expression.

Social: zeni.ballazhi , @ballazhizeni

TC Kida

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

USA

Both of these pieces are responding to the chaos of the initial years of the second Trump administration in the United States.

The New Look is reflective of the ways in which the current campaign of terror engendered by ICE/DHS in our immigrant communities echoes the invocation of the Alien Enemy Act in Executive Order 9066 to legitimize the mass incarceration of people of Japanese heritage from across the West Coast during World War II. It is also responding to the aesthetization of the "tactical" look in this new era of fascism.

Similarly, Always Save the Liquid tackles the weaponization of the aesthetics of the idealized wealthy white women (Mar-a-Lago face) as part of the package of cultural practices meant to reinforce the cisgender, heterosexual patriarchal underpinnings of the Christian Nationalist hegemonic project.

Website: https://tckida.com

Olesya Gumenenko

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Russia / Spain

Your personal belongings are your responsibility, Video

I am used to restrictions and warning signs.

I built an internal defense system. Control becomes a necessity.

“Your personal belongings are your responsibility.”

A phrase so common it becomes invisible.

What happens if I take it out of the context, when it no longer has a limit?

Full text of the Manifest

Your personal belongings are your responsibility.

Your body is your responsibility.

Your data is your responsibility.

Your thoughts are your responsibility.

Your desires are your responsibility.

Your fears are your responsibility.

Your life is your responsibility.

Your past is your responsibility.

Your future is your responsibility.

What happens to you is your responsibility.

What others do to you is your responsibility.

What you cannot refuse is your responsibility.

What breaks you is your responsibility.

What breaks me is my responsibility.

What I cannot refuse is my responsibility.

What was done to me is my responsibility.

My thoughts are my responsibility.

My desire is my responsibility.

My fear is my responsibility.

My past is my responsibility.

My future is my responsibility.

My absence is my responsibility.

My silence is my responsibility.

My disappearance is my responsibility.

What I don’t know is my responsibility.

What I cannot know is my responsibility.

What cannot be named is my responsibility.

Responsibility is my responsibility.

My responsibility is not my responsibility.

Responsibility cannot be mine.

This is my responsibility.

This is not my responsibility.

This is not mine.

This is not.

*****************

Duration: 03:26

Year: 2026

Website: https://olesya-gumenenko.art/

Alexia-KTD

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Bulgaria

G.O.D. (Gold. Oil. Drugs.) was the second vision of this year, which came as a response to the release of the Epstein Files, telling the story of a slave who escaped and is now selling her personal belongings for survival. The work aims to expose connections between "friends," victims, and dark old rituals. Everything has a price... so do the items she tries to sell.

The green painting at the end of the table, an homage to my beloved Dali, represents an eternal moment that will cost you the ultimate price—your soul. The full magic of the inner artwork reveals under a blacklight, leaving to be seen the question of the pigeon, "Why are people only watching?"... only watching the market stall and not buying anything... only watching the pedophiles in power and not doing anything. Some items are stolen from the places she has been, like the Adrenochrome blood bag, Diddy's baby oil bottle and The Black Book of J.E.; others, like the narcotics, the pigeon, and the flowers referencing important countries, are found on the streets and collected along the way.

Mocking herself with the hat, trying to make the best out of it, she shows her body and story to the people, hoping that someone will pay attention.

But who knows what is the real story or the correct chronology of our history? Do you know the answer?

Website: https://www.keytodaydream.xyz/

Elshad Pashayev

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Azerbaijan

My name is Elshad Pashayev. I am a young artist from Azerbaijan working in the field of dark surrealism. Through grotesque and unsettling imagery, my work explores inner conflict, fear, personal transformation, and the fragility of the human condition. My visual language combines elements of horror, symbolism, and emotional expression, creating a space between nightmare and personal experience.

Social: @asmodeyus_art

Richard Michaud

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

USA

These works confront the grotesque theater of power: a dictator dressed in the borrowed costume of a president. Through fractured pixels, sickly flesh tones, and corrupted portraiture, Trump is not presented as a leader, but as an infection wearing authority like a mask. The images distort the familiar face until it becomes machinery, rot, spectacle, and warning. They speak to the collapse of civic language, where flags, suits, podiums, and patriotic gestures can be used to launder cruelty into policy and ego into nationhood.

The ugliness is intentional. It refuses polish because dictatorship is never clean beneath the uniform. These pieces turn presidential imagery into a damaged screen, a public wound, and a record of decay. They ask what happens when power stops pretending to serve people and begins demanding worship. Beneath the costume is not strength, but fear, vanity, and the appetite to dominate everything, without shame or restraint.

Website: https://shmtsukge.cc/

Emma Inman

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

USA

We are all human. Hatred is not sustainable. Greed, corruption, racism, bigotry, religious hatred and intolerance, and some misguided adherence to a sense of nationalism, should never take the place of caring for my fellow human beings and standing up for what is right.

Website: http://emmainmanstudios.com/

Sayeh Parsaei

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Iran

This work portrays Dīv — meaning “devil” or “demon” — as a symbolic and exaggerated reflection of human nature. These figures belong to the hidden layers of the contemporary human psyche, where fear, violence, anxiety, desire, and emotional collapse emerge through distorted and restless faces. Suspended between the human and the non-human, these forms reveal the concealed wounds and tensions carried within modern existence.

‏Inspired by the mythological concept of the Dīv and reimagined within a contemporary context, the work explores the psychological condition of humanity in today’s unstable world. The exaggerated and deformed figure reflects a mind shaped by fear, crisis, politics, and emotional instability — gradually losing its sense of peace and identity. The demon within the work is not an external creature, but a manifestation of the suppressed, contradictory, and wounded aspects of human existence.

Website: https://www.sayehparsaei.ir

Social: @sayehparsaei

Email: sayehparsaei0@gmail.com

G. E. Vogt

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

USA

It is easy to tune out what is currently happening around the world; the crises seem too large, too existential, and too convoluted for anyone to really fix. The American Observer series was born out of my feelings of helplessness and hopelessness when it came to these massive problems; all I could do was observe them with no sense of what to do about them. What became more and more difficult to ignore though is how much impact people, ordinary, individual people actually have. Whether standing up for their neighbors or even strangers, fighting against data centers and AI, resisting with art and music, protesting in the streets and against the enablers of these regimes, individuals have SUCH power to make a difference. None of us are responsible for filling the bucket of resistance on our own, but we are all responsible for putting our individual drops into it until it overflows into change.

Website: https://www.aworldinpieces.com/

Social: @gevogtart

Sarah Winters

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

United Kingdom

Most of my art is print based or digital. This note design came about whilst I was exploring oil and the current crisis in the Middle East. The 3 cyanotype fuel pumps can be seen on the note which is $100 to reflect the price spike. By putting Trumps face on Franklin he looks like a pirate which mirrors his behaviour. The clock of Independence Hall lands on his forehead by splicing the note to show alternate sides- a foreboding sign of this glitching Presidency. This was inspired by Ed Ruscha, Banksy and Cildo Meireles.

‘Ghosted' explores a printer running out of ink as a metaphor for absence and disconnection, evoking the emotional residue of communication breakdowns. This was inspired by Morandi, Thiebaud and Warhol. The original large version is on paper, there is a C-type Fuji gloss and video version on a retro 80’s TV.

Social: @allylouwin

Mariya Myronova

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

United Kingdom

In Modern Diplomacy and Propaganda, I ask viewers not only to look at the paintings, but to analyse the world around them: history, current events, political language, propaganda, public obedience and the repeated patterns of violence.

Political violence rarely arrives honestly. It comes dressed in noble words: peace, protection, patriotism, order, tradition. The mask changes; the machine continues. My symbols — the burglar mask disguised as peace, the television head, the organ grinder, the obedient crowd — are not decorative surrealist inventions. They are visual clues pointing beyond the canvas.

I want the audience to pause and ask: Where have we seen this before? Who benefits from the story being told? Who is asked to obey? What is hidden behind the performance?

Website: https://myronovaart.com/

Joanne Sergeant

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

United Kingdom

The Language of Protest is a visual essay exploring protest as both a political act and a shared cultural performance. Rather than focusing on a single movement or event, the project examines how protest is collectively shaped through language, symbols, gestures, and public participation. Motivated by concern over the growing normalisation of fascist and discriminatory beliefs, the work considers how protest is experienced, communicated, and embodied on the street.

The project focuses particularly on placards as one of the most immediate and powerful forms of expression within demonstrations. Through slogans, handwritten messages, humour, anger, and symbolism, these signs create a visual and emotional vocabulary through which people make demands, express solidarity, and challenge power.

Responding to recent protests across the United Kingdom, the work documents streets transformed into contested spaces where debates surrounding immigration, gender, national identity, geopolitics, and the environment are publicly negotiated through confrontation, performance, and collective presence.

Website: www.jophoto.org

HeresAndHolti

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:21:24 GMT

Netherlands

We live in a time in which identities are manufactured, outrage is cultivated and fear circulates faster than reflection. Societies continuously create new outsiders, spectacles and systems of belonging.

Through fictional worlds, symbolic figures and dystopian satire, we explore how exclusion becomes normalized and how collective narratives shape human behavior. Our work does not offer solutions or moral conclusions. Instead, it creates spaces of discomfort, ambiguity and recognition.

Zeefluweel travels through fractured societies as a silent observer — documenting synthetic realities, scapegoating and the strange rituals of contemporary culture. The worlds may appear surreal, but their mechanisms are deeply familiar.

Website: https://www.heresandholti.com

Lewis Andrews

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:11:13 GMT

united kingdom

‘Destruction of Our Pale Blue Dot’ focuses on the destruction we're causing to our oceans through activities at sea, such as oil drilling and pollution, whilst simultaneously touching upon the issue of our oceans being unable to absorb any more carbon dioxide from our atmosphere, decreasing the amount of time we have to reverse climate change.

The drawings are created over an elapsed period as ice blocks melt into the Indian ink to create the drawing. Echoing the notion of our planet losing its sea ice, we only have a short amount of time left to reverse this damage before it’s too late. With our activities across the planet increasing the harmful gases within our atmosphere, the oceans are no longer capable of absorbing any more carbon dioxide and are accelerating the effects of climate change. Our planet, once referred to by Carl Sagan as a ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is suffering and dying.

Website: www.lewisandrewsartwork.com

Lone Sorensen

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:39:38 GMT

united kingdom

Lone Sorensen is a painter and academic who explores in her art our democratic present and future and the role of truth within them. The current moment marks a turning point in which performances of masking and unmasking switch as populist and authoritarian leaders politicise the idea of democracy, remould its meaning, then blatantly drop it as an albatross, only to don it again as a protective plumage. Lately the mask is coming off, a development we should all fear.

Painting mainly in oil and often in impasto, Sorensen’s portraits of political leaders and influencers depict moments in our unfolding democratic history that document its fragile and crumbling state, with a particular focus on obstructions to addressing the climate crisis. Her paintings at times adopt an almost sculptural form as they engage with the visceral qualities of the flesh and its emotionalised and performative expressions of power.

Website: https://www.lone-sorensen.org/art

Jeffrey Rollins

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:23:24 GMT

Türkiye/USA

The works in this series are a selection from my on-going Book of Kings project. Inspired by the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), an epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi in 1010, I reflect upon the Shahnameh’s stories of war, strife, dreadful chaos, and great beauty within the shape-shifting landscape of our world today. I mine the surfaces of contemporary society where words have lost meaning, making paintings on the backside of political campaign signs and cultural posters taken from city streets, in Europe, America, and the Middle East. Evoking pealing walls and flesh both visceral and disturbing, my paintings and artist books construct strata of densely layered signs and patterns embodied in the residue of present-day events.

Website: https://www.baykalrollins.com

Jie Huang

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 01:29:22 GMT

CHINA

My practice investigates how emotional norms, familial expectations, and social language operate as subtle disciplinary systems. Growing up within a culture where care often arrives in the same form as control, I became attentive to the quiet mechanisms through which affection, obedience, and emotional suppression are negotiated. My works examine these frictions—how love becomes regulation, how protection becomes enclosure, and how everyday expressions of concern can imprint themselves onto the body and psyche.

I work across installation, ceramics, and mixed media, using transparent surfaces, fragile structures, and domestic materials to recreate the emotional architectures that shape intimate relationships. Enclosures, boxes, repeated phrases, and symbolic objects often appear as metaphors for invisible boundaries—at once protective and restrictive. By externalising private emotional experiences into physical form, I seek to make visible the psychological landscapes that are typically hidden or normalised within family and social life.

My practice combines tactile making with critical reflection. I draw from psychology, social theory, and my own lived history to explore how individuals internalise expectations, and how emotional discipline becomes embedded in daily language. Through material layering and spatial tension, I aim to create spaces where viewers can recognise their own negotiations with care, obedience, resistance, and the desire for self-definition.

Ultimately, my work asks how emotional control circulates in ordinary life—and how art can open a space for observing, reframing, and potentially releasing these inherited structures.

Website: www.jsusya.com

Jennifer Peralta

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:39:46 GMT

Canada

The red relates a sort of anguish as the populace reaches for a viable answer to illicit depravity within a non-functional society as the blue through enlightenment evokes a harmony that in belief will be ascertained. Where democracy is backsided to the opposite not revealing a viable front what should exceed is the rule of the masses as the populace should hold power and make decisions that affect us all by communally deriving solutions. In self government the remedy is done by investigation where we shall listen to all collectively as a holistic international order is forwarded.

Trees can symbolize the act of arbitration. This tree mediates as it embodies a judgement between the polarity of each side of the scale concerning what the red and blue areas represent in this governmental sphere reaching a state of equilibrium as it will always persist in the dichotomy of existence.

The main focal configuration of this artwork can be delineated as a type of fishbowl curving in shape on the canvas in the form of a bowlike branch. It contains an abstracted steel structural mass inside concerting a tangible theoretical concept of the mechanical world. There is a visually determined statement between the two entities concerning these specific areas on the canvas - organic branches with leaves versus the engineered manmade abstracted steel beams. As the organic bordering outer shape with leaves is an assertion of how nature has triumphed and evolved through millennia. In solution ecology will naturally grow and an answer will flourish to the contrived manmade nature of sprawling construction. Our reality is built on what we have created in human invention. As nature fights back and compensates for any challenge.

Website: https://jeniperalta.wordpress.com

Social: @jeni.peralta.3954

Alastair McDougall

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:34:13 GMT

My world, Your world

How can you judge me?

Your world is done.

Trees gone, cities choked.

Cars everywhere.

Foul rivers flood.

Now you shout about

Di-vers-ity. Ecol-ogy.

Except you shout at me.

We find gold in our ground

There’s nothing left in yours.

You call our situation Ex-ploit-ation,

You want to save our trees?

My people need food.

Not your plastic.

United Kingdom

Not My Problem

Sun rises, sun sets.

Life goes on, and on

Its not my problem.

Oh no.

Houses fall into the sea,

Houses fill with mud from the flood.

Summer was hotter than ever before.

Too hot to lie on the beach.

Fires rage, dreams up in smoke.

Sun rises, sun sets.

Why is this not my problem?

Oh, and the sea is full of plastic.

The tides carry it far away, so that’s OK.

Then there are people.

People people people.

People everywhere.

Some with guns.

Some with bombs.

Some with nothing to eat.

Or drink.

That’s OK as long as they don’t come here.

Oh no.

Sun rises, sun sets.

The world burns, people starve.

Far away.

So that’s OK.

Of course most art is purchased to provide uplift, to enhance, to give lasting pleasure, and I certainly strive to provide that elusive 'Feast for the Eye'. BUT - the world around us, that world we paint, is in crisis and Artists have the opportunity, or actually the OBLIGATION to use their work to raise awareness or even to stimulate change. I have realised that the impact of art is increased enormously when a painting is accompanied with words to hit viewers' senses, and that those words are strongest when structured like a poem.

Website: https://www.dolphinsunsetart.com

mattwala

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:23:37 GMT

United States

As a visual artist living in the United States, I've come to terms with what much of the world has already known: fascism, hatred, and bigotry exist, and they'll win if we remain afraid to speak out. Oligarchy seems to be winning, taking everyday people's worlds away and commodifying them. The two pieces I've submitted here were intended for use during protest marches or publication in pro-people magazines (though they never were published). This intention lends to their poster-like compositions and messaging.

'Black Blood' addresses the exploitation of oil cartels, while 'Sold Down the River' critiques how America has been covertly taken over by oligarchs, leaving the nation in distress – a situation conflated with the US’s long, troubled history of slavery.

Jane Fairhurst

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:16:04 GMT

United Kingdom

When Trump first came to power in 2017 I was horrified and felt helpless. What could I do to protect all that I love against this devastating turn of events?

I had recently been doing in depth research into amulets, talismans and fetishes and the magical ways that people protected themselves against evil, disease and warfare in the past and those that are still extant.

I developed a series of textile sculptures ‘Fetishes for Uncertain Times’ as a response to the devastating political events and predicted climate apocalypse. With all that happened in his first term I never imagined Trump would be re-elected and I don’t believe he really won.

We cannot let the evil side win or all is lost!

Social: @jane_fairhurst_art

Alison Vetters

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 17:08:04 GMT

Panopticon, Video

United KINGDOM

My work focuses on using moving images to dig into political issues. Inspired by writers like Mark Fisher, I look at how living in a late-capitalist world affects us both mentally and socially. Economic pressure, repeated cultural patterns, and uncertain futures shape our thoughts and communities. I am interested in how systems of control, both obvious and hidden, guide our behavior, limit our imagination, and shape what we accept. My approach is openly anti-capitalist, not just for show, but as a way to reveal the contradictions and limits we face every day and to highlight the possibility of political resistance.

This work expresses the strain of surviving within a class system that enriches the few while exhausting the many.

Taking Fisher's assertion that "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" as a provocation, the work gestures toward collective imagination through dance and the possibility that new ways of living, free from exploitation and oppression, may yet emerge within a system that insists no alternative is possible.

Feet Don't Fail Me Now, Video

Free from what?, Video

My practice currently focuses on moving images as a powerful tool for political exploration. Drawing on the insights of writers like Mark Fisher, I delve into the psychic and structural effects of living in a late-capitalist and increasingly devastated reality—where economic pressure, cultural repetition, and uncertain futures shape our inner lives and social environments. Central to this exploration is a deep interrogation of systemic control: the subtle and overt mechanisms through which capitalist structures manage behaviour, limit imagination, and manufacture consent.

My work is explicitly anti-capitalist, serving not merely as a stance but as a lens to reveal the contradictions and constraints that permeate our everyday experiences, all while signalling the potential for meaningful political resistance. Through a blend of found footage, personal recordings, text, and animation, I create layered visual environments that blur the lines between documentary, critique, and poetic disruption. I am motivated by the desire to expose cognitive dissonance—the tension between what we know and what we are conditioned to accept through hegemony. By interrupting familiar narratives and destabilising passive viewing, I aim to illuminate the often-hidden forces that shape our lives, work, care, and visions for the future—forces that thrive on being overlooked to maintain their influence.

My installations and moving-image work seek to spark moments of recognition—cracks in the façade of normality where the grip of the system loosens and the possibility of resistance shines through. In a culture that often claims there is no alternative, my practice works tirelessly to create a space for questioning, unsettling, and envisioning something beyond the prevailing logics and constraints. In doing so, it gestures toward the urgency—and the potential—for collective political empowerment and fight back!.

Website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKosp1R_8L6XPc457jKG9tA

Social: @alisonvetters

Linda Lewis

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 16:57:38 GMT

United States

These works emerge from a world increasingly shaped by fear, spectacle, and indifference. We are told to accept cruelty as policy, surveillance as safety, and inequality as inevitability. Human beings are sorted into categories of value while power protects itself through violence, distraction, and manufactured division. My figures—mannequins, dolls, fractured bodies, and abandoned toys—stand in for all those rendered voiceless within systems that prize control over compassion.

I believe art must resist numbness. It must bear witness to suffering while preserving the possibility of empathy. The decay within these images reflects political, social, and spiritual erosion, but also the persistence of memory and humanity beneath it. These works ask viewers not to look away from injustice, displacement, or oppression, but to recognize themselves within the fragile figures before them. In a culture that increasingly dehumanizes, I see the act of witnessing as both resistance and responsibility.

A social democratic platform advocates for a democratically controlled economy that benefits the majority, emphasizing social ownership, strong social safety nets, and reduced economic inequality through government intervention. Key policies include Medicare for All or universal healthcare, college for all, and programs to support working-class communities, strengthen unions, and address climate change. This approach seeks to reform capitalism rather than abolish it, focusing on balancing economic efficiency with social justice and equality.

Website: http://www.lindalewis.net

Sarah Soward

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 16:04:18 GMT

United States

I am not a compliant person. I speak up. I step forward. I exist in chaos abated only by my own plans within plans surrounded by plans. Sometimes, I let the chaos win and things like this happen.

Enjoy the inside of my mind, without my usual guardrails.

This is what it looks like when corvids roar.

Website: www.sarahsoward.com

Marion Dutheil

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:56:25 GMT

Canada

Through art, I can testify to injustices and raise awareness in a powerful way. By transforming the violence and ugliness of marine pollution into aesthetic and impactful imagery, I honor oceanic biodiversity and highlight this harsh reality. The impact of pollution on these ecosystems is a brutal truth, and through my photography, I convey this suffering and distress.

Social: https://www.instagram.com/mariondutheilphotography/

Jacqui Kipfer

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:46:52 GMT

Canada

As a New Zealander and Canadian, I am keenly aware of the impact of climate change on the planet's delicate bird life. "Watching Birds" showing our birds in the unusual front-on perspective, with the triad of climate change impacts looming darkly behind, almost unseen, stresses that the impact goes far beyond humans. I encourage you to not be the frog in the pot of hot water, getting hotter. Don't succumb to complacency, jump out and take action, where you are, with what you have.

Website: https://www.jkipfer.com

Ian Bride

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:33:09 GMT

United Kingdom

I shudder, oft times despair, at the direction that so much of the dominant world is now travelling in - right-wing populist, nay neo-fascist, governments; a severe erosion of human rights, humanity and empathy in the face of extreme cruelty, even genocide; and a return to the patterns of environmentally destructive behaviours upon this our unique and precious planet.

The Leshy (2024). The Leshy is one of many names given to the pagan Slavic deity of the forest, a deity or spirit common to most cultures around the world. Leshy will punish those who disrespect or misuse its resources – hampering, frightening, injuring, kidnapping, and even killing the offenders. Here in ghostly form, he points at us, accusing humankind for our shamefully poor treatment of forests and their inhabitants. You are warned…. Approach and his eyes will burn, and he will chill you with his voice – though we can perhaps redeem ourselves slightly if we offer him votives detailing and pledging our good behaviours. Then the Leshy might show us some mercy; even treat us benevolently when we enter his domain… if we speak softly and tread lightly...

'She too'. is comprised of a set of images from a book of photos of Roman busts I inherited from my mother (who in some important ways was also a victim of men). These images, which are virtually all of busts of men, struck me as constituting a historical record of ‘the gaze’. Here ~51 male images are positioned around a single image of a woman. All but one have had their eyes removed, yet still maintain their gaze, a patriarchal, cultural, and psychological gaze that transcends the capacity of sight - as well as (largely) the capacity for insight. In so doing, the piece generates a powerful, to some - almost claustrophobically predatory, representation of a contiguous historical reference - to thereby remind us of the stubborn persistence of the ‘She too’ 'moment' - and its need for social justice and social change.

Website: ianbride.com

Jonny Kemp

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:20:12 GMT

United Kingdom

Money doesn't exist. Say something that has a point. Take time to escape.

Website: www.jonnykempart.co.uk

Social: @jonny_kemp_artist

Michael Wagner

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:09:59 GMT

Germany

Even though power-hunger and selfishness seem to be leading to hatred and division at the moment, in reality there is only one viable path to the future: the path of love, community, and willingness to share. Let us strive with all our might to realize this path.

Moji Musa

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:42:05 GMT

United Kingdom

Ode to Filistine (2025) is an acrylic painting in which I merge contemporary realism with symbolic narrative. I use a keffiyeh-draped chair as the setting for a still life featuring a watermelon and a cluster of olives—objects that carry deep cultural resonance for Palestinians. Each element serves as a quiet emblem of identity, endurance, and resistance, inviting viewers to reflect on how everyday forms can hold the weight of history and belonging. I rely on a meticulous technique and a restrained palette to create both stillness and tension, aiming to evoke dignity amidst struggle.

Al-Hubb (2024), meaning love in Arabic, explores emotion through layered abstraction. Using acrylic, I depict a multifaceted heart in varying shades of purple to express the many phases and dimensions of love. The gold-leaf detailing of the word al-hubb brings a sense of reverence, while the stark white background represents the purity and openness of this profound emotion.

Helen Birnbaum

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 16:32:03 GMT

United Kingdom

I approach society, and science, in a questioning way and the starting point of much of my work is contemporary society’s relationship with world changing events such as climate change. The aim of my work has always been to communicate these ideas in the most accessible, and even, humorous way possible. I strive to create exciting art that will always make you think. I explore different materials, whilst engaging viewers in a conversation about the ecological crises that face the world. I explore themes of consumer culture, environmental recklessness, and socio-political global conflict in ceramic and the plastic debris left on our beaches. I make compelling work that reveals plastic's wider implications for our environmental health, marine ecosystems and how both marine and human populations can survive.

The sculptures are in part made of the rubbish we discard and become symbols of the way we treat our precious environments. Through assemblage and hand building methods hand-building techniques I create the sculptures, and they often incorporate found materials such as rusty industrial metal pieces, coiled telephone wires and found objects. Aluminium, steel and copper waste found in local scrap yards and recycling centres in the North West is also used. Recycling old metal and plastic pieces always plays an important part in my artistic practice bringing to fruition my design ethos and also in echoing the ecological themes I champion. By using sustainable materials the intention is that people are reminded of these pressing environmental issues.

I create large scale installations consisting of many hand-built ceramic and metal pieces and Shed Salty Tears is my third large scale installation. I always hand build in the same way, starting off by wrapping thin sheets of clay around formers made from cardboard tubes and plastic pots. Once the clay is leather hard, and this basic shape has formed, I attach different pieces as needed to create the forms and often decorate the sculptures with found metal objects. I believe that the old metal objects, often rusty, add a quirkiness and character to the pieces that clay alone could not do. I glaze my work in a variety of ceramic stains and glazes some of which I apply sometimes even before the bisque firing stage. These levels of glaze and stain give a richness and depth to the sculptural surface. The surface texture complements the distinctive forms of all the sculptures I create.

The quirkiness and energy of Modernist design excites me and I aim to harness this dynamism whilst commenting on aspects of our own vastly altered world where the use of resources far outweighs our ability to dispose of them sustainably.

Websites: https://helenbirnbaumceramics.com https://helenbirnbaumportfolio.wordpress.com https://shedsaltytears.wordpress.com

Social: www.instagram.com/helenbirnbaumceramics

Gen Doy

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:53:03 GMT

United Kingdom

"Epic Fury" is on paper selected to suggest a desert environment, and the title is that of Donald Trump's campaign to bomb Iran "back to the stone age". Iranian wildlife gathers around Trump's baseball cap. Their reactions are negative. In the Food Chains drawing, we follow the chains to see how plants (which could feed humans) are used in farmed-fish food . The fish are fed antibiotics and substances to colour their flesh shades of pink, rather than the grey the fish have when contained in farming enclosures. Intensive fish farming does produce food protein but damages the environment and involves wasteful use of nutritional plants and medicines. Fish also develop abnormalities, and are plagued by lice. I have been using non-human imagery in recent drawings to draw attention to exploitation of creatures for profit, and also to allude to the ways in which war damages both humans and nature.

My work is research-based, aiming to bring the past into a productive confrontation with the present, exploring what a political art practice might entail. Works in the last few years include Cuts Piece, featuring Ms. Atropos, who cuts the thread of life (about Government Cuts); historical witch trials and their relationship to contemporary scapegoating of migrants; the late Medieval Dance of Death/Dance Macabre theme and its transposition to the present; a Scottish Sibyl who answers questions with obfuscating statements taken from comments by government and business spokespeople; drawings in the manner of 17th century emblems which relate to ongoing war, pestilence, famine and death, and works on animal/human inter-actions .

Recently I have been making work about Palestine and the human and environmental destruction there, ocean pollution and threats to marine life, and I am involved in a project called Seed _2065. For this I have done three large drawings - Seeds of destruction, Seeds of hope and Seeds of future in the past. These make reference to past and present wars and how seeds can be used as a symbol of rebirth but also exploited by big agribusinesses. I get lots of ideas for my work by reading current news reports and looking at the historical roots of present day conflicts and climate change. As well as developing my art practice I regularly attend protests and demonstrations.

Websites: https://www.gendoy.com https://soundcloud.com/guineveredoy

Social: @pepedoy

Alina Karmadanova

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:56:42 GMT

Canada

As a Russian artist, I want to speak clearly: I condemn the aggression against Ukraine. This war should never have happened. It brings only pain and death — to Ukrainians, to Russians, to everyone whose lives it touches.

Many people in my country have been manipulated by state propaganda for years, taught to see enemies where there are none. Fear has replaced empathy, and truth has been buried under slogans. Through my work, I want to speak against this — to remind us that no idea, no flag, no government can justify violence or the loss of human life.

It is time to stop being afraid of the truth.

Website: https://www.alinakarma.art/

Social: @alinkarmart

Matthew Morpheus

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 16:48:44 GMT

United Kingdom

I hear the echo of protests; I see the reflections of revolutions. And every pixel in the collage is the shadows of digital cities. My collages are a path that leads to new freedoms. And every line of the canvas is a struggle, this is a sound, this is an era of change.

I seek inspiration in the mundane and the extraordinary, in fleeting moments and eternal truths. The interplay of chaos and order, the tension between freedom and constraint – these paradoxes ignite my creativity. And perhaps, most profoundly, it is the human spirit – resilient, fragile, and infinitely complex – that fuels my artistic fire.

Matthew Morpheus is not merely my name; it is my manifesto. I morph reality, distilling it into fragments that resonate with the viewer's own memories. My collages are bridges between past and present, between nostalgia and possibility.

Website: https://mrmatthewmorpheus.crevado.com

J. Lee Bertram-French

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 15:56:31 GMT

Canada

Life under capitalism is hard. Hope is vital to surviving, but especially to thrive and change the world for the better. Capitalism is horror without end, but there will be an end to capitalism. The senile decay of capitalism polarizes society. While many swing to the right, the left welcomes far more. We have an opportunity to out organize the right and win. For fascism to systemically take hold, the working class must first fail to take and keep power during revolution. The workers and oppressed of the world will prevail in ending this system. For the first time in history, the largest mass of society will take and defend our power from fascists and capitalists alike. This is the hope that I am rooted in when life is hardest.

Social: https://www.instagram.com/j.lee.bertram.french/

Daniella Kelley

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 15:56:31 GMT

United States

Daniella Kelley is a political organizer and movement builder living in Washington, DC. With a background in social justice campaigning and a deep-rooted family history in art, Daniella is learning to blend activism and various artistic pursuits. She hopes to use her art to push the boundaries of what it means to be "doing enough" in times of fascism, and use whatever medium calls to her to imagine brighter futures.

Instagram: @fearlessarmchair

Donna Mindart

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 15:56:31 GMT

As Donna Mindart, my piece "Still We Struggle" is born from raw emotions of living in a world where hardship and division seem so inescapable. This Artwork is incredibly personal to me- it actually brought me to tears as I drew it- because it reflects the struggles we all face, from mental health battles to economic hardships to the relentless challenges that just seem to be everywhere. I feel strongly that so much of this made worse by the lack of compassion and the selfishness of political systems that don't prioritise people's well-being and I wanted to pour these feelings into this piece.

"Still We Struggle" is my way of saying that even though the world feels heavy and unjust, we can still acknowledge that struggle and push for a kinder world. I hope my art can be the voice to those feelings and a reminder that we're not alone in wanting a better, more compassionate world.

Website: www.missdonnamindart.com

United Kingdom

Benjamin Gibson

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 15:56:31 GMT

Canada

Trump is not New York's betrayal, but it's confession—the inevitable result of a city built on ambition, inequality, and the belief that anything can be bought, sold, or leveraged. Romanticized. Unforgiving. Unapologetic.

Website: www.benjamingibson.ca

O Yemi Tubi (MOYAT)

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 01:02:33 GMT

United Kingdom

TRUMP’S ICE CRIME: In Trump’s second term with his campaign of white supremacy with his MAGA movement he targeted the Somalis community in Minnesota. In their ruthlessness and savagery, Trump’s Gestapo – ICE officers executed many Americans not sparing white people like RENEE GOOD that was killed because of her solidarity stand with the oppressed non-white people. This is what influenced my painting titled Trump’s ICE Crime.

I illustrated the man in the middle of the painting in my unique style of Roses and Thorns. The Rosy day for the man was the day he got to America and the sad and thorny day was the day he was arrested by Trump’s ICE.

TUMP’S CAGE: Statement below the Statue of Liberty welcomes immigrants that are seeking solace in the great land of liberty (USA) In 2019, I used Donald Trump’s profile to house the children of immigrants imprisoned by Trump’s government.

I am a Nigerian-born, American-trained Artist residing in the United Kingdom. I am an artist with a unique personal style. Most of my recent paintings were influenced by the political and social upheaval of our world today and the works of Renaissance artists.

“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art”, so said Paul Cezanne; I was moved by emotion to do most of my political and socially influenced paintings “THE EAGLE HAS LANDED” addresses the American-led war on terror, while “KABIYESI OBA OBAMA (Unquestionable King Obama)” offers a satirical take on the complex relationship between President Barack Obama and Donald Trump. The exchange of missiles of words between President Donald Trump of America and Kim Jong Hu of North Korea provoked me to do the painting “THE CHICKENS’ FIGHT.” In solidarity with Christians beheaded by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, I created “THE BLEEDING ROSE” I also use my work to critique the exploitation of African nations, as seen in AFRICAN’T, HUNGER IN THE LAND OF PLENTY, and OIL: AFRICANS’ WEALTH AND WOE—paintings that reflect the paradox of Africa’s poverty amidst its vast natural wealth. My work, “THE FISHERS OF MEN,” is about the horror of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. I also used my painting “UKRAINE: THE UNFORTUNATE BRIDE” to speak about the American and Russian-influenced war in Ukraine. To advocate and promote positive change to the climate change I created “MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE” and “NURTURING OUR PLANET”

I desire my portrait paintings to be uniquely creative. I do not copy images from pictures. I create what the camera cannot create. I use portrait paintings to tell the stories about my subjects and often use my subjects’ professions to create their portraits as I did with the portrait of Professor Wole Soyinka, 1986 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature in painting “SOYINKA: An Africans’ Literary Icon”, I used artist materials to create my painting “PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST” and I used the violin to make the face of my subject in the “THE VIOLINIST”

My works progress from political paintings to paintings of the facts of the life of people.

The overarching theme of my work is "The Facts of Life: Roses and Thorns." Life is roses and thorns; sometimes it emanates the sweet aroma of pleasantness, and sometimes it pricks and causes pain. I often use roses and thorns for portrait paintings of the facts of people's lives. I first employed Roses and Thorns in my political painting “THE BLEEDING ROSES” and has since then adopted this floral iconography style - Roses and Thorns as my unique signature style in some of my paintings like “DOMESTIC ABUSE” and “MY MOTHER, Her Majesty Platinum Jubilee: Her Rosy Reign” further explore this theme, using roses and thorns to portray the complexity of personal and collective experiences. Roses representing joy and achievement, thorns symbolizing struggle and hardship.

Website: https://o-yemi-tubi.pixels.com/

Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/yemi.arts

https://www.instagram.com/oyemit

https://www.twitter.com/OyemiartsOyemit

https://www.linkedin.com/in/olabamiji-yemi-tubi-b0ab9a15/

https://www.youtube.com/result?search_query=o.+yemi+tubi

Adam Strange

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:25:51 GMT

Canada

Aldous Huxley, the British writer, once wrote, “There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” Adam Strange creates his art in that space between the known and unknown. The space is made of nuanced, disturbing and sensual images. The pieces are journeys from the purely aesthetic to a sacramental vision. Light and shade, become the primary language for interpreting the image. Messages resonate by visual association instead of literal understanding. These are images of realism. By turns, demanding, fearful, and disorienting. They are fit representations of the times we live in.

Website: https://www.adamstrange.art