Visual AIDS

For the 2016 Day With(out) Art, Visual AIDS commissioned COMPULSIVE PRACTICE, a video compilation of compulsive, daily, and habitual practices by nine artists and activists who live with their cameras as one way to manage, reflect upon, and change how they are deeply affected by HIV/AIDS. This hour-long video program was distributed internationally to museums, art institutions, schools and AIDS organizations.

Viva Ruiz invites transgender AIDS activist, artist, and beloved friend Chloe Dzubilo (1960–2011) to speak via never before seen Hi-8 footage filmed by Chloe's then-partner Kelly McGowan in the 1990s. The process triangulates mother (Chloe), lover (Kelly), and child (Viva) in a deliberate ritual to uplift the spirit and legacy of an ancestral teacher. Through artifacts from the moment when video first became accessible and before mobile phone cameras became ubiquitous, we witness Chloe declare herself and her sisters as leaders in art, advocacy and culture for evermore. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

I'm Still Me explores how digital platforms have created community and connections for Sian, a Black woman living with HIV and navigating the stigma and misinformation that is prevalent in the American South. Through her blog, social media accounts and online video platforms, Sian connects with (predominately) heterosexual Black women that send her messages, ask questions, and share their experiences with stigma and fear, all the while creating community that may have previously only existed in the shadows. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2019 as part of STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven short videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Me Cuido (I take care of myself/I’m careful) questions the relationship between colonial paradigms of health, religious guilt, and the stigmatization of people living with HIV in the context of Chile’s capitalist and neoliberal regime. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.

In evidence, Julie Tolentino’s naked, moving body articulates backward on her hands and knees, balancing a cluster of Asian medicine cups. The piece, originally made in 2010 in collaboration with Abigail Severance, was remixed for Visual AIDS in 2014. Tolentino's self-made sound piece was added and initiates the video with a queer list of loved ones living and lost, recognizable or not, as both invocation and provocation of individuals who deeply shifted her perspective. As the listed names blur and are archived in Tolentino's body, evidence opens up to the list's potency through a female, brown, artist/activist body in the unseen yet held spaces of relationship, memory, sex and loss. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2014 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, a program of seven videos that bring together charged moments and personal memories amidst the public history of HIV/AIDS.

Finding Purpose reflects on the experience of producing a film about the lives of teens born with HIV in Uganda and the pervasive stigma that surrounded the project. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.

STONES & WATER WEIGHT responds to the need for new interpretations of HIV+ people. Mykki Blanco completes tasks that test the physical capabilities of the body and the boundaries of normative health to challenge society's perception on the fragilities of those who survive with the virus. In this era of globalized fitness culture through the use of social media, "looking healthy" matters much more than actually being healthy. Using endurance as the motivation for the performance, the video creates a new perception of HIV+ people as strong and resilient. Research references include the Atlas myth, the god of endurance that holds the earth and the skies over his shoulders, as well as the never ending climb of the Sisyphus myth. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2017 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, a program of seven videos prioritizing Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett for Visual AIDS.

Ministry of Health employs the aesthetics of horror movies and silent film to evoke the adverse effects of pharmaceuticals on four men living with HIV in the city of Tlaxcala, Mexico Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2020 as part of TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States.