Inspired by Andy Warhol’s famous happenings, Alessandra Mattanza had the idea of creating an opening day for the “Animals for Social Justice” art exhibition, featuring different artists and artworks. And to choose, 20 May 2026, World Bee Day, to dedicate it to the bees, some of the most amazing animals of the planet.

Alessandra created 3 videos dedicated to bees: “The Dance of Bees,” “Bees Around the World,” and “Bees Bliss,” which she assembled into a “Bees Compilation.” While studying the bees for this project, she found that they do perform a real dance.

The “bee dance” refers to a complex set of movements honeybees use to communicate. The most famous of these is the WAGGLE DANCE, a figure-eight pattern performed by foragers to share the precise location, distance, and richness of a food source with the rest of the hive.

The dance can be decoded as follows:

• Direction: The angle of the “waggling” straight run relative to gravity correlates to the position of the sun outside. For example, if a bee waggles straight up, it means the flowers are directly toward the sun.

• Distance: The duration of the waggle (and the buzzing sound) represents
how far away the food is. Roughly one second of waggling equals about one kilometer of distance.

• Quality: The intensity and enthusiasm of the dance tell other bees how abundant or high-quality the nectar is.

Beyond the waggle dance, bees use a few other distinct movement sequences to coordinate hive operations:

• Round Dance: Used when a food source is very close to the hive (typically less than 50 meters). The bee runs in narrow circles, alternating directions, to communicate that food is close, though it does not specify the direction.

• Shake Dance: Foragers will vigorously shake their abdomens in front of other bees to excite them and recruit more foragers to the waggle dance floor when a highly rich nectar source is found.

• Tremble Dance: When foragers bring back more nectar than the hive can process, they walk slowly around the nest, trembling and quivering. This signals to other bees to stop foraging and start helping to process nectar into honey.

On OPENING DAY, 20 May 2026, thanks to the UN Exhibits Team’s assistance, Alessandra opened “Animals for Social Justice” with an inspiring event. She invited the International American Ballet to participate and the choreographer, prima ballerina, and founder, Analia Farfan, to create a bee dance for her new bee video art installation.

Alessandra also invited other artists to perform, including the Nigerian artist KANYE, who did a live painting of a bee, and Federico Solmi, who presented his marvelous new video installation.

ANIMALS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE is an art exhibition, a multimedia art project, and a journalistic campaign, created by journalist and multimedia artist Alessandra Mattanza to inspire awareness for the protection of all animals, especially endangered species, farm animals, and pets. It aims to protect the environment and nature, emphasizing biodiversity, ecosystem health, sustainability, urban living, and leveraging innovation and AI for good. “Animals for Social Justice” also aims to identify concrete, practical solutions through partnerships with other associations, governments, institutions, foundations, and companies. It is a call to act from everyday life on a global scale, to love and protect animals worldwide.

Besides Alessandra’s digital artwork and photography, the art exhibition “Animals for Social Justice,” in partnership with THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE, which provided also beautiful photography, includes art by globally famous artists, such as digital artists FEDERICO SOLMI (Italy/USA) who created a new video installation specifically for the art show, CONNIE BAKSHI (Taiwan/USA), HACKATAO (Italy), the visual artist KAN YEYACHUKWU TAGBO-OKEKE (Canada/Nigeria), the painter DIANA LJUNGAEUS (Sweden/ USA), street artists ARDIF (France) and ADNATE (Australia), the anonymous famous street artist BAMBI (UK), and one artwork, “The Love Rat” by BANKSY (UK), provided by FITZ CONTEMPORARY.