HeAlTH INFormATioN & VieWs - CD8 T cells - The Body

APeter Carlyle-Gordge takes a look at
HIV art and HIV-positive artists in Canada.
Here are four of our favourites.
rtistic expression can be many things.
It can be educational or a call to action. It can be soothing or shocking. It can
reflect our times and passions. At its heart, however, it is an expression of the
individual artist and his or her engagement with life.
Artists have been involved in the HIV epidemic since its earliest days, when
there was little to medicate and much to terrify. In the U.S., ACT-UP’s artistic offshoot
Gran Fury helped push the epidemic in the face of the establishment,
reminding us all that SILENCE=DEATH. Slowly, politicians and people began to
get the message: Stop pretending that AIDS isn’t happening and start taking
action against it. A too-complacent and bigoted world needed to be shocked into
spending money, developing drugs and finding a cure.
Canadian HIV-positive artists and their HIV-negative allies were also addressing
the epidemic. General Idea—composed of Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson—is
one of the country’s best-known collectives of AIDS-activist artists. Active
from 1967 to 1994, by which time both Partz and Zontal had died of AIDS, they
were pioneers of early conceptual and media-based art.
General Idea addressed the AIDS crisis with work that included some 75 temporary
public art projects from 1987 to 1994. Their major installation, “One Year
of AZT/One Day of AZT,” was featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
City and now resides in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
The irreverent collective is perhaps best known for its 1989 AIDS graphic,
inspired by Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE image.
While art was drawing attention to the unfolding epidemic, HIV-positive
artists were living with a disease that, at the time, was usually fatal. For many,
art was a way of processing this grim future and honouring those who had died
of AIDS. Bob Sirman, director of the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa, was
involved in Canada’s art community during those early years of the epidemic.
Art can be therapeutic, he explains: “We all have great challenges to find meaning
in life. I think art helps us to find a sense of order and meaning when huge
challenges like HIV come up.”
The introduction of effective antiretroviral therapy (ART) in 1996 meant that
the virus could be brought under control and death could be averted. Art filled
with rage, denial and sadness was replaced by life-affirming work. More
recently, a new generation of HIV-positive artists is raising again the banner of
arts-based activism, marching in the footsteps of their predecessors. The art of
four people living with HIV, whose stories we share in the coming pages, illustrates
this evolution of HIV and art in Canada over the past 30 years.
Summer 2012 THE POSITIVE SIDE
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