To celebrate the four decades since the founding of the MST, several organizations are calling on artists from all over the world to participation in the MST 40 Years Art Call. The idea is to invite popular artists to join this symbolic process of mística and celebration and collectively reflect– through art– the history and current challenges of the struggle for land.


Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research interviewed the painter Zheng Shengtian. Winds from Fusang (2017) is a mural by him and Sun Jingbo included in dossier no. 51, Looking Towards China: Multipolarity as an Opportunity for the Latin American People. Zheng spoke to us about his life’s work, Winds from Fusang, and about Chinese-Latin American cultural exchanges dating back to the 1950s, propelled by the Bandung Conference. This interview is a reflection on art, multipolarity, and the possibilities brought by China’s re-emergence.


On 2 May 1942, hundreds of China’s leading writers, artists, and communist leaders gathered to discuss the key cultural questions of the time. The historic Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art lasted for three weeks.


In all, 52 works were submitted, with contributions by artists from 13 states in Brazil and 5 different countries. Their works were arranged around the three axes suggested in the call for art: ‘Popular Education and Conscience: The Originality of Freirean Pedagogy’; ‘To Hope in 2021: The Relevance of Paulo Freire’s Ideas’; and ‘A Pedagogy That Changed the World: Freire’s Internationalist Practice’. As well as digital illustrations, collages, and drawings, we received photographs recording the experience of popular education in various corners of the country and the world, demonstrating how Freire’s ideas remain fundamental for our activism.


On the anniversary of the 26th of July Movement’s founding, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research launches the online exhibition, Let Cuba Live. 80 artists from 19 countries – including notable cartoonists and designers from Cuba – submitted over 100 works in defense of the Cuban Revolution. Together, the exhibition is a visual call for the end to the decades-long US-imposed blockade, whose effects have only deepened during the pandemic.