Mixing Messages, Making Connections

Curator statement by John Chaich

 

In curating Mixed Messages for Visual AIDS, I returned again and again to one of the most simple but profound messages I have ever heard about HIV/AIDS: “AIDS is a crisis of connections.” I was told this in the mid 90s, from the staff psychologist at the AIDS service and education organization where I began my career. Years since, I have forgotten the therapist’s name, but never her words.

As a writer and designer, I am always drawn to words and the experience they conjure-- whether spoken, written, designed, or arranged. I strive to present text-based works here because I’m curious what associations their verbal and formal compositions can trigger in the context of an AIDS-related show. At once polemic and poetic, the words in these works capture the sites, sound bites, and sights reflecting reactions to and connections through HIV/AIDS across generations. 

In this exhibition and beyond, HIV/AIDS is embedded in deep relationships and diverse entry points. Cultural, educational, financial and medical connections at macro and micro-levels build the support systems individuals need to make healthful decisions. The acts in which HIV is transmitted—intercourse, sharing needles, and even giving birth—may be the very ways in which we find connection.

At once interpersonal and social, this connection starts between Two People, as Rob Wynne’s poured-glass wall sculpture shows, divides between “you” and “me,” as echoed in Amanda Curreri’s Leveller doormat, and escalates to the chorus of Matt Keegan’s You, Me, I, We. 

From the intimacy of Yoko Ono’s post-card sized Touch Me to the anonymity of Larry Krone’s handwritten installation repeating And I Will Always Love You, a hunger for emotional, physical, spiritual, and temporal connection dwells in these works. Deborah Kass and Nolan Hendrickson reference not just classic disco lyrics but moments of exasperation and exaltation. Joe De Hoyos’ Stay, Stay, Stay looks like a ransom note but pleads like a love note. Charlie Welch’s Expressa’t translates as “I don't know sex without latex and it makes me sad,” while Craig Damrauer reminds us what happens, after all, when you assume. Risk and reward live in the intersection of Desire/Despair, Jack Pierson insinuates.

Like the synonyms for “aids” that Kay Rosen’s print details, AIDS has always challenged us to both take care of ourselves and care beyond ourselves. In this context, Glenn Ligon’s One Live and Die speaks to the disproportionate impact of HIV on African American and African peoples and the need for community-centric responses. J. Morrison invites viewers to take an American flag hand-printed with the logo aids: Made in the USA—a gesture oddly fitting for a show that opens and closes on the heels of Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Leslie Hewitt and Lucas Michael subtly use numerals to capture moments and locations critical to personal and public histories—be it a year in the life of a loved one lost or the address of a bathhouse, respectively. The large-scale reproduction of David Wojnarowicz’ seminal 1990 Untitled (One Day This Kid…) amplifies the story of this every man’s transformation of hurt into art.

Likewise, the impact of AIDS on the lives of gay men and the impact of gay men on AIDS has been historic and symbiotic, evolving, and evocative, as poet Justin Chin frames in his contributing essay, The Gutted:

They said, “You don’t know what it’s like! To love & fight & struggle & need, to want & to bury, to heal & hope & can-can, to despair, to decay, to sparkle & to screw down to the bone. You don’t know what it’s like to be, but We do! We Do! Why won’t you listen to us? Why won’t you do as you’re told because we know so well.” 

Inspired by gay club culture, James Jaxxa uses goopy, shimmery materials in Take/Need/Fear/Junk to imply that all that glitters is not gold but it sure feels good. As Sam McKinniss’ work states, “lifestyles ultra sensitive” indeed.

Sometimes apparent and sometimes ambiguous, the relationships of these artists to HIV and how it informs their work is as mixed as the messages we hear about the virus today, from the ongoing battle over safer-sex versus abstinence-only education to the contrast between AIDS-is-not-over and HIV-is-a-manageable-disease campaigns. In the gallery, these messages may be undetectable: Nicholas Fraser places barely visible text in surprising locations, and Christopher Pennock’s I Am A Danger to Myself and Maybe Others challenges legibility. 

The tone-on-tone quality of GRAN FURY’s Four Questions t-shirt furthers pairs visibility with divisibility, asking “Are you afraid of people with AIDS?” and “Do you trust HIV-negatives?” Rudy Lemcke captures the historic debate over needle distribution and harm reduction. Andrew Graham’s AIDS is God’s Curse appropriates the visual language of extremists like Fred Phelps, while Visual AIDS artist member Frederick Weston recalls the typography of 60s protest posters, and Felix Gonzales-Torres places the viewer within a heritage of gay activism.

At these moments, Amanda Keeley’s door hanger cleverly points out, our ideologies and actions can so easily shift from love to hate, empathy to apathy.

As, British graphic designer James Joyce observes: You Do What You Do and They Do What They Do.

 Well So What If I Did, Lou Laurita’s painting counters.

 Same old, same old, Jayson Keeling’s New Graffiti/Old Revolutions seems to summarize.

So is AIDS still a crisis of connections? Depends on how you are connected. With access to drug regimens and support systems, HIV may not necessarily be fatal, but as John Giorno’s canvas reminds, life inevitably is. For me and for many, the threat or reality of HIV infection has reframed life, loss, love, risk, health, and hope. I hope Mixed Messages can reexamine our connections to HIV and each other. Life may be a killer, but in the words of Nightsweats & T-cells screenprint, we somehow manage to Annoy Them... Survive.

I am grateful to the staff at Visual AIDS and LaMaMa La Galleria for this opportunity, indebted to the featured artists and their representatives to lending their words, works, and commitment, and to all readers and visitors for connecting with this exhibition.

Click here to download the Mixed Messages catalogue.

Mixed Messages closes Sunday, July 3, 2011

La MaMa La Galleria
6 East 1st Street, NYC
Gallery Hours: Thursday-Sunday from 1-6 PM

ArtForum.com Critics' Pick: Mixed Messages

Jayson Keeling New Graffiti, Old Revolutions, 2010

via ArtForum.com

Critics' picks

New York 

“Mixed Messages"

LA MAMA GALLERIA 

6 East 1st Street 

June 2–July 3

On the eve of Gay Pride––and the marketing emporium it has become––the quips and anthems assembled by curator John Chaich in this exhibition co-organized with Visual AIDS conjure up a different moment in the history of queer sloganeering. Veering from the angry to the elegiac, the messages here are as mixed as their vehicles. All of the works, however, attest to an effort to give voice to the AIDS crisis, from its emergence in the early 1980s to the present day. That more than half of the objects date from the end of the last decade, in fact, confirms the enduring, if increasingly undetectable, devastation of the pandemic.

NEW GRAFFITI OLD REVOLUTIONS, reads a faded C-print by Jayson Keeling from just last year. Nearby, a 1989 silk screen by Felix Gonzalez-Torres confirms this sentiment, linking––with the simple apposition of neat typeset words––the founding of the People with AIDS Coalition in 1985 to other civil rights actions, such as the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1891. Of course, much of the show underscores the obverse: a marshaling of “old graffiti” via strategies gleaned from Dada and the “heroic” avant-gardes to voice a newer struggle. Lithographs and collages, photostats and silk screens all testify to further intersections between 1980s agitprop and the art world.

Striking a wry, bittersweet note, Deborah Kass’s 2007 gouache Make Me Feel evokes the lyrics of disco legend Sylvester James, who died of AIDS in 1988. One of Sylvester’s last singles featured work by Keith Haring, another casualty of the disease, like his East Village contemporary David Wojnarowicz. The latter’s Untitled (One Day This Kid . . . ), 1990, sprawls across the wall, an effigy that is sweet and mordant in equal measure (and also seems like a site-specific installation, hanging so near to his old East Village haunts). Along with Wojnarowicz, a few other luminaries shine, from Yoko Ono to Jack Pierson to Glenn Ligon, with his 2006 black-light installation One Live and Die. But it is the variety of work here that truly captures––in both affect and relative anonymity––something of the disease’s insidious reach.

— Ara H. Merjian

NY Times Review: Mixed Messages

via The New York Times - Art in Review
Published: June 23, 2011 

MIXED MESSAGES: A(I)DS, Art + Words

by Holland Cotter

La MaMa La Galleria

6 East First Street, East Village

Through July 3

All the art in “Mixed Messages,” this year’s edition of the annual summer group show sponsored by Visual AIDS, is based on words. This theme of language in art is a bit shopworn, but the curator, John Chaich, brings some snap to it through his multigenerational choice of artists. And the H.I.V./AIDS context around which the show revolves gives the idea of communication a certain urgency. 

Some of the art — by General Idea, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kay Rosen and Gran Fury — dates from the 1980s and ’90s and refers to AIDS directly. So do a few newer pieces. The New York artist J. Morrison silk-screens the words “AIDS Made in the U.S.A.” on miniature American flags, free for the taking. And for a poster Andrew Graham lifts a phrase that appeared on placards protesting the ordination of the gay Episcopal bishop Gene Robinson in 2003: “AIDS is God’s Curse.” 

There are references to safe sex. Sam McKinniss makes one, in a painting composed of the words “Lifestyles Ultra Sensitive.” So does the artist duo and transgendered couple Chloe Dzubilo and T. De Long, in a canvas tote emblazoned with the words “No Glove No Love.” (Ms. Dzubilo, a fixture of the East Village music and art scenes for decades, died this year. The show is dedicated to her and to the painter Lou Laurita, who died last year.) 

Most of the rest of what’s here touches on more general existential and relational matters. “Life is a Killer” says a painting by the poet John Giorno. Ivan Monforte embroiders the words “You’re Beautiful” in elegant script. Joe De Hoyos turns to collage to deliver a life-and-death lover’s plea: “Stay Stay Stay.” A text drawing by Frederick Weston strikes a note of 1960s uplift. David Wojnarowicz’s “Untitled (One Day This Kid...)” from 1990, with its bitter description of the fate of a gay child coming of age, is included only as a photocopy, but who cares? It’s one of the great works of political art of its time. 

An installation by Larry Krone called “And I Will Always Love You” also ranks pretty high. It consists entirely of the words of the title repeated in handwritten, unpunctuated, tightly spaced lines over the walls in the gallery’s bathroom. The phrase is from a torchy song associated with Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston and untold numbers of drag performers. As in much of his art Mr. Krone makes the piece both a tender joke and more than that: an expression of manufactured pop emotion taken seriously. Three decades on in the age of AIDS it’s enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Ask Me: June 29 @ Mixed Messages

 

Ask Me: Mixed Messages co-hosted by Cammi Climaco and David Crabb featuring:

Becca Albee, Visual Artist, reading from the letters of Robert Blanchon
Dan Fishback, Performance Artist
Jim O'Grady, Storyteller
Daisy Rosario, Storyteller  

Wednesday June 29 from 7– 9 PM

 $10 Suggested donation

La MaMa La Galleria, 6 E 1st Street, NYC

 

New ecards from Visual AIDS

Check out the new selection of new ecards for Pride or any occasion from Visual AIDS, featuring artwork from our Artist Edition projects, including Play Smart, and artwork from some of Visual AIDS artist members.  Send one today here.

 

Steed Taylor in A&U and Radiant Road Tattoo

An Artist’s Journey 

by Chip Alfred

via A&U

Prolific Artist and Long-Term AIDS Survivor Steed Taylor Opens Up About His Body of Work, and How Spirituality and Helping Others Have Kept Him Alive

As a young boy in rural North Carolina, Steed Taylor liked searching for clay in the woods and making things from it. Born in a small town outside Fayetteville, his fascination with art began with sculpture and led to an enduring career in various media—painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and public art. 

Steed, who recently turned fifty-one, is probably best known for his Road Tattoo public artwork installations, which have been commissioned in more than twenty cities in the U.S. and one in Beijing. But there is much more to this artist than where the tattoo meets the road. 

Steed grew up in a devout Southern Baptist home. The son of a career Army officer, Steed quickly adjusted to relocating with his family about once a year, which he believes gave him a unique perspective on humanity. “Moving around a lot, I saw a much bigger view of the world.” 

After high school, Steed moved to Chapel Hill to attend the University of North Carolina, where he studied creative writing and studio art. He took a year off to live in New Orleans, and he experienced an epiphany. “I embraced being gay, and I realized I could mold my life into what I wanted.”

He began to mold his life as an artist after graduating from UNC, where his studio artwork focused primarily on intaglio etching, a process dating back to the ancient Greeks that involves making prints from engravings etched into a metal plate.

Steed weaves a common thread throughout the art he creates. “The work comes out in different ways. My goal is that the context and the feel of my art production have cohesiveness or similarity.” Recurring themes in his work are commemoration, loss, and longing. 

There was a time when the one thing Steed longed for more than anything was a normal life. After being diagnosed as HIV-positive in the early eighties, his life was turned upside-down. “My friends from college still had that bright sense of the future, that they could do anything,” he says with envy. “I was longing to be able to survive with no real indication that I would.” 

“It was very early in the process. There was not much knowledge about AIDS yet,” he recalls. “They told me I was going to die in two years and I should get my things in order. I was really floored by that.” 

At that point, Steed turned to his spirituality for support. “What happened to me was to much more aggressively make sense of that information in a spiritual context so it would not overpower me,” he says with conviction. “There were rumors of people that had lived for four years. I held on to that idea and decided to sort of back away from conventional medicine and embrace more spiritual concepts of health and well-being.” 

Now, more than twenty-five years later, Steed is strong, healthy, and very much in demand. He says his volunteer work helping others has helped him through tough times in his own life. For years, he has been a Buddy or a support group leader for chronic or terminally ill AIDS patients. “It’s helped me get out of my head and into my heart and the hearts of other people.” 

Steed has also volunteered his time for Visual AIDS as a board member. “Visual AIDS brings the message forward that the AIDS crisis is not over, that there are things people can do,” he says. He praises the organization for its archive project, which features Steed’s work among other artists who are living with HIV/AIDS as well as those we have lost. “It’s a tribute to bodies of art by anybody who defined themselves as artists.” 

Over the years, Steed’s art has evolved to encompass expressions of himself and his emotions. “You need to bring out what’s inside you or it will take over,” he explains, paraphrasing a passage from Scripture. He started this phase of his career with a series of self-portraits, including a church altar screen with Steed’s image on the side facing the congregation and biblical text for the minister on the other. A series of self-expressionistic projects in other media followed. 

Votive is a wax sculpture he created in memory of his father, utilizing flowers as shorthand for grief and the temporal nature of life. Modeled on camellias, his father’s favorite flower, each petal and leaf is stretched and delicately molded by hand, resulting in thousands of fingerprints impressed into the piece. 

Survivors Knot is a series of site-specific Road Tattoo installations painted on roads in several U.S. cities, featuring a Celtic knot design appropriated from tattoo art to celebrate long-term AIDS survivors in each community. 

Blood Prints is a continuing series of prints made from blood after cutting sacred images or designs of personal significance on volunteers. It’s unique in its use of “the body as a tool to make prints,” he says. 

Steed created a series of dye transfer monoprints, taking photographs and using chemicals to reprint them, sometimes using photos of himself, sometimes using a composite of the same image. “What I find evocative about this process is that it can accentuate certain parts of the body and the prints can be translucent,” says the artist. 

Reflecting on his most high-profile project, Steed says, “I’m really pleased that the Road Tattoo project is very successful public art and it exists on several levels. It’s more than just a design on the road.”

For a smaller group of people it has special meaning—commemorative, informative, or a dedication. “It gives people a sense of personal ownership of public space.” For others driving on the “tattooed” road not knowing anything about it, he says the reaction may be something like, “What the fuck? This is really cool!” 

Steed acknowledges he’s reached a certain level of accomplishment in his career, but still describes himself as a journeyman artist. “I’m not rich from my work. I’m doing it for the love of making art,” he says. “Creating anything—no matter what it may be—you have to love it so much that you want to bring it into reality.” 

He believes art is something you’re called to do—much like a priest or minister receives a calling from God. Steed doesn’t envision himself doing anything else. He strives to be an “artist’s artist,” one who can be an inspiration for other artists and “a force for good in the world.”

For more information about Steed Taylor and his art, visit www.steedtaylor.com.

image: Flaming Heart, 2006, HIV-positive blood double-printed from incised body while bleeding, 12 by 14 inches. © Steed Taylor. All rights reserved

Watch Steed Taylor's Radiant Road Tattoo video below


Radiant Road Tattoo from Steed Taylor on Vimeo.

Silence =

Mixed Messages artist Craig Damrauer has donated a limited edition print to benefit Visual AIDS.

The signed offset 15"x 22" print, Silence = is available for $20, sold exclusively during Mixed Messages at La MaMa La Galleria thru July 3 or online here.

Taken from his New Math series, Damrauer's equation filters the complexity of social situations through the simplicity of algebra.  Selections from New Math have been seen in The New York Times and Jen Beckman's 20x200. A set of New Math postcards, edited by Ed Rushca, was published in 2009. His work has also been shown at the 2011 PULSE Art Fair, NYC and MCA Denver.

Chelsea Now Review: Clarity through Mixed Messages

Clarity through mixed messages
by Lily Bouvier
via Chelsea Now / GayCityNews.com

How do you put more than 30 years of pandemic struggle, horror and death into words? In “Mixed Messages,” over 40 artists try their hands at expressing the HIV/AIDS crisis through whatever means possible — from words scrawled on bathroom walls and ceiling ducts, to statements proclaimed in paintings, prints and sculptures, to messages stamped on door handles and floor mats. All of these methods, and more, are employed to communicate messages meant to end the silence (and death) that still persists.

The brilliance of those concise messages resides in their endless possibilities: “You do what you do/And they do what they do” (James Joyce), “So what if I did” (Lou Laurita), “Lifestyles/Ultra Sensitive” (Sam McKinniss), “Touch Me” (Yoko Ono). Each can mean one thing to the artist, another to the viewer.

The works are accompanied by neither a face nor a story, and yet are painfully intimate. Curator John Chaich focuses on a message he heard years ago from a colleague at an AIDS service organization: “AIDS is a crisis of connections.” Recalling the lasting impact of that quote, Chaich says, “The acts through which HIV is transmitted — intercourse, sharing needles and even giving birth — may be the very ways through which we find connection.” A piece by artist Paul Chisholm (“Fuck Me I Have…Love & H*I*V”) echoes this agonizing reality.

“Mixed Messages” is the most recent project by Visual AIDS — a contemporary arts organization dedicated to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness. They seek to fight AIDS by provoking a dialogue, and that’s what these artists have done. Their words are not just a cause for reflection, but a call to action.

Through July 3 at La MaMa La Galleria (6 East 1st St., btw. Bowery & 2nd Ave.). Gallery hours: Thurs.-Sun., 1-6pm. Call 212-505-2476. Visit visualaids.org and lamama.org. 

On Wed., June 29, 7-9pm: “Ask Me: Mixed Messages.” This benefit for Visual AIDS features a night of storytelling inspired by the exhibition, hosted by Cammi Climaco and David Crabb. Suggested donation $10; all are welcome. Visit askmestories.com. 

image: Jack Pierson “Desire/Despair.” 1998. 20" x 16". Photo courtesy of the Artist and Cheim & Read, NY 

Mixed Messages video on POZ tv

POZ magazine visit Mixed Messages opening reception on June 2, 2011.  Watch the video or read more here.

And Don't Miss -

Mixed Messengers Talk - A panel discussion among the creative teams behind recent HIV prevention campaigns.

Sunday June 12 from 4 - 6 PM  • Free
 
Moderated by Kenyon Farrow, co-editor of Letters from Young Activists, featuring:
Stephen Karpiak, PhD,  ACRIA's HIV & aging outreach Ivan Monforte, GMHC's First Ladies Care
Kevin O’Malley, NYC’s GayMeth.org and SF's Stop AIDS Project
Chuck Pollard, L’Oreal Hairdressers Against AIDS

Stuart Sanford kickstarter pledge

Visual AIDS's friend and talented photographer, Stuart Sanford, has offered to make a donation to Visual AIDS as a way of giving something back to the LGBT community who have supported my work thus far.  If the exhibition goes ahead, Stuart will donate $500 from pledges to Visual AIDS and make an additional donation from sales of work once the exhibition is complete.

Stuart Sandford is an artist from the UK currently based in Brooklyn, who works in photography and video, and is looking to present a NYC based solo exhibition in late summer 2011. 

Read more about his exhibition project here

 

You can see some of his work at www.stuartsandford.com 

Mixed Messengers Talk: June 12, 4-6 PM

Presented in conjunction with Mixed Messages a text-based exhibition reflecting reactions to and connections through HIV/AIDS across generations. On view at La MaMa La Galleria through July 3, 2011. 

Upcoming
Ask Me: Mixed Messenges - An evening of storytelling inspired by the exhibition.

Wednesday June 29 from 7– 9 PM • Suggested donation
Co-hosted by Cammi Climaco and David Crabb with:

Becca Albee, Visual Artist,  reading from the letters of Robert Blanchon
Dan Fishback, Performance Artist
Jim O'Grady, Storyteller
Daisy Rosario, Storyteller

askmestories.com.    

All events held at La MaMa La Galleria, 6 E 1st Street, NYC

30 Years In, We Are Still Learning From AIDS

Ken Meeks, photographed in San Francisco in September 1986, died three days later. His skin lesions were the result of Kaposi's sarcoma, a rare cancer that was a harbinger of the AIDS epidemic. © Alon Reininger/Contact Press Images

30 Years In, We Are Still Learning From AIDS

By Lawrence K. Altman, M.D.

via New York Times

At first it seemed an oddity: a scattering of reports in the spring and early summer of 1981 that young gay men in New York and California were ill with forms of pneumonia and cancer usually seen only in people with severely weakened immune systems.  

In hindsight, of course, these announcements were the first official harbingers of AIDS — the catastrophic pandemic that would infect more than 60 million people (and counting) worldwide, killing at least half that number.

But at the time, we had little idea what we were dealing with — didn’t know that AIDS was a distinct disease, what caused it, how it could be contracted, or even what to call it. 

As AIDS has become entrenched in the United States and elsewhere, a new generation has grown up with little if any knowledge of those dark early days. But they are worth recalling, as a cautionary tale about the effects of the bafflement and fear that can surround an unknown disease and as a reminder of the sweeping changes in medical practice that the epidemic has brought about. 

Reports of the initial cases were confusing. The first federal announcement, 30 years ago this week, concerned “five young men, all active homosexuals,” with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, or P.C.P., a disease “almost exclusively limited to severely immunosuppressed patients.” Initial suspicion fell on a known infectious agent, cytomegalovirus. 

A month later, on July 3, 1981, I wrote The New York Times’s first article about AIDS, this one headlined “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” (“Gay” had yet to be accepted by The Times’s style manual.) The cancer was Kaposi’s sarcoma, and until then it had seldom been seen in otherwise healthy young men. 

continue reading...

 

The Death Sentence That Defined My Life

The Death Sentence That Defined My Life

By Mark Trautwein

via New York Times Op-Ed

Most people don’t think death has a schedule, at least a knowable one. But if you were infected early in the AIDS epidemic, you thought otherwise. At 61, I have now lived half my life with AIDS, my constant companion and distant cousin, the inseparable identity I won’t let define me, the everyday fact and special circumstance that bent the arc of my life in every way.

Although there was not yet a test for the disease, I mark the beginning of my AIDS life in 1982. It’s hard to imagine now the intensity of sexual liberation that gripped gay men then. Oppression was out. Freedom was ours, and we declared it with sex.

But after a tryst with a famous, closeted actor, a huge raincloud of a bruise appeared on my arm. I was hospitalized with a blood disorder that had no apparent explanation. Befuddled doctors guessed a lot, and asked if I drank gin and tonic. I told them it was my father’s drink. Less absurdly, the disorder had been seen among gay men in New York. The phrase “gay plague” was in the air, but no one knew what it was or how anyone got it. It seemed so random then, picking off strangers and acquaintances for no particular reason, but always, you told yourself, for reasons far from you. Then suddenly it wasn’t far from me at all. I left the hospital certain that I had “it.”

As the epidemic grew through the 1980s, all gay men lived with AIDS, whether infected or not. Thirty years ago today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the first cases of the disease. It was a helpless and terrifying time. Medical information grew. We learned about H.I.V. and sexual transmission, but everything was misty and qualified.

Nothing you knew or did mattered. There was no treatment. Every sniffle threatened something worse, every germ was a dagger pointed at your immune system. A good friend stomped out of my house one night, furious I’d served pork for dinner, because pork, everyone knew, could kill you if you had “it.” Even after the test became available, many chose not to know. When my partner and I tested positive, we shrugged. We already knew.

I felt stalked by death. Sex could mean death now, not freedom. More friends became ill, then more. Far too many died. Often their deaths were gruesome. Eulogies were perfected. TV news anchors looked at you every night and calmly pronounced your disease “always fatal.” 

continue reading...

image: © Barbara Kruger

 

March to End AIDS

George Towne: The Company of Men

The Company of Men

June 2 - July 9, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, 6-9pm

Michael Mut Gallery
97 Avenue C, NYC

The Company of Men, an exhibition by George Towne, is a subjective perception of masculine menʼs desirability and beauty. The artistʼs 2007 painting, Fire Island- Sunset (Study), is similar to the Romantic painting, The Monk by the Sea, by Caspar David Friedrich. Each painting represents the emphasis of aesthetic experience, whether it is the playground of Fire Island for gay men as depicted in Fire Island-Sunset (Study) or an allegory of nature versus human in The Monk by the Sea. The paintings are a catalyst for each artistʼs maturity and therefore create an existential epiphany.

Through the reflection of his sexual identity, Towne was able to develop a true passion for male portraitures. The oil paintings synthesize the polemics of a gay male gaze. Towneʼs juxtaposition of men in blunt and provocative poses with that of nudity and tenderness is aesthetically visceral. The paintings are an outlet for Towne to release a liquid flow out of a tube onto a canvas, therefore implicating his desire for these masculine men. Through an abjection of masculinity, Towne displays the social construct of how gay men are often perceived to have a masculine corporeal selfmisrelation. The release of the paint and the rendered context empower gay menʼs masculinity and deconstructs perceptions of identity and alterity.

read more here

Mixed Messages pictures

Mixed Messages opening on Thursday June 2 at La MaMa La Galleria was a great success.  Check out images from the opening reception on Facebook by Social + Diarist.  Exhibition runs until July 3, 2011.  Upcoming events include:

Mixed Messengers Talk - A panel discussion among the creative teams behind recent HIV prevention campaigns.

Sunday June 12 from 4 - 6 PM  • Free
Moderated by Kenyon Farrow, co-editor of Letters from Young Activists, featuring:
Stephen Karpiak, PhD,  ACRIA's HIV & aging outreach
Ivan Monforte, GMHC's First Ladies Care
Kevin O’Malley, NYC’s GayMeth.org and SF's Stop AIDS Project
Chuck Pollard, L’Oreal Hairdressers Against AIDS 

Ask Me: Mixed Messages - An evening of storytelling inspired by the exhibition.
Wednesday June 29 from 7 - 9 PM • Suggested donation
Co-hosted by Cammi Climaco and David Crabb with:
Daisy Rosario, storyteller
Jim O'Grady, storyteller
Dan Fishback, performance artist
Becca Albee, visual artist
askmestories.com.  

All events will be held at La MaMa La Galleria.

AIDS turns 30: Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on HIV/AIDS in 2011

BBC News: How a red ribbon conquered the world

How a red ribbon conquered the world

By Tom Geoghegan 

via BBC News, Washington DC

Thirty years after the HIV virus was first documented, the red ribbon is the ubiquitous symbol of support for those living with the illness. Who thought of it and how did it get so big?

In the sparse surroundings of a former classroom on a spring day in 1991 - a decade after the rise of AIDS - a group of 12 artists gathered to discuss a new project.

They were photographers, painters, film makers and costume designers, and they sat around in the shared gallery space known as PS122 in New York's East Village.

Within an hour or so of brainstorming, they had come up with a simple idea that later became one of the most recognized symbols of the decade - the red ribbon, worn to signify support for people with HIV/AIDS.

"We wanted to make something that was self-replicating," says Patrick O'Connell, who chaired the meeting. "It's extremely simple, like Bauhaus but half a century later. You cut the ribbon 6-7 inches, loop it around your finger and pin it on. You can do it yourself."

The ribbon was the latest project by Visual AIDS, a New York arts organization [directed] by O'Connell that raises awareness of HIV/AIDS.

When they sat down in the shared gallery space of PS122 in May 1991, they wanted to get people talking about the illness that was decimating their professional and social network, in the face of public indifference and private shame.

People were dying without even telling their friends why they were sick, and the artists wanted a visual expression of compassion for people living with AIDS and their carers.

"Even in New York, we were very aware of how many people couldn't talk about it, or were oblivious, or were going through it themselves but ashamed to talk about it," says photographer Allen Frame, who was also one of the 12. "We wanted to make people feeling isolated more supported and understood."

Their inspiration came from the yellow ribbons tied on trees to denote support for the US military fighting in the Gulf War, he says. Pink and the rainbow colours were rejected because they were too closely associated with the gay community, and this was an illness that went well beyond.

"Red was something bold and visible. It symbolized passion, a heart and love."

The shape had no significance but was easy to make. 

It took two more meetings to refine the design and then they set to work on making the ribbons themselves, distributing them around the New York art scene and dropping them off at theaters.

At the start, Visual AIDS volunteers made the ribbons themselves

Initially there was a text that went with it, to explain why they were being worn, although this was later dropped because it became superfluous. 

A few weeks after that first meeting, the group sent a box of 3,000 ribbons to the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway, ahead of the Tony Awards for the theatre industry. Some of them were making ribbons and watching the televised event as actor Jeremy Irons, one of the presenters, came on to the stage wearing one. 

"Within three days, the media finally figured it out and it snowballed. I started being contacted by people in Hollywood," says O'Connell.

Demand increased to such a degree that supply needed to be outsourced, and Visual AIDS used a charity working with homeless women to make the ribbons. They sent out 10,000 ribbons for one Oscars ceremony, and over the coming years they made about 1.5m.

Stars like Bette Midler and Richard Gere were not only wearing them, but openly discussing why it was important. A ribbon-sporting culture developed within the acting profession.

"It became trendy and sometimes I think celebrities felt blackmailed and thought they had to show up wearing a ribbon, which wasn't the case," says O'Connell. "We weren't keeping count that way."

The ribbons first crossed the Atlantic in large numbers on Easter Monday in 1992, when more than 100,000 ribbons were distributed at an AIDS benefit concert in London's Wembley Stadium for Freddie Mercury. 

They also began to proliferate in mainstream American life. Schools and churches across the US touched by the illness started to contact Visual AIDS for advice on how they could explain it to children and parishioners - the answer was to hold a ribbon-making event.

"This was a way to educate people in a non-combative way," says O'Connell, who has a ribbon on every item of clothing. Direct action was still important, he says - campaigners occupied the Stock Exchange and tried to re-enact a funeral on the White House lawn - but the ribbon was a way to broaden the conversation. 

One unforeseen consequence has been the number of awareness ribbons that have been adopted since - pink for breast cancer being the most well known. 

The artists purposefully never trademarked it - the point of the project was to invite more people in, says O'Connell - which meant it could appear anywhere without Visual AIDS' permission or any payments. It even turned up on a US Post Office stamp.

But he and some of the other artists behind the concept believe the proliferation and merchandising of the ribbon - ornamental ribbons selling for $19.95 in department stores and red ribbon mugs - has commercialized and trivialized their idea.

In a spirit more in tune with the one envisaged by Visual AIDS , the ribbon is replicated in many different forms for memorials on World AIDS Day, and its symbolism no longer needs any explanation.

In the poorest parts of the world, ribbon production has been central to efforts to raise funds and change attitudes, says Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust in the UK.

Women's collectives make ribbons and adorn them before selling them in their community. "A number of people living with HIV really appreciate seeing other people wearing the red ribbon. They realize they're not alone and recognize that the majority of people wearing them probably don't have HIV themselves, and that sense of support and solidarity is very, very important.

"There has been some criticism, that it is only a symbol. But symbols are important, and the way in which the red ribbon was embraced by community activists, doctors and researchers is a unifying emblem in what is a very disparate epidemic.

"The brilliance of the artists was not copyrighting it. Making it freely available was a gift to the AIDS community worldwide."

Those 12 artists never worked together again as a group, but with the battle against the illness ongoing, their activism continues.

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