To mark World AIDS Day, the New York–based arts nonprofit Visual AIDS, which supports HIV-positive artists and fights the disease through art, released a slide show called Radiant Presence, with images of works in the organization’s Artist+ Registry, which is the largest database of works by artists with HIV/AIDS. The slide show, which also includes facts about HIV/AIDS, includes works by well-known artists who were lost to HIV/AIDS, including David Wojnarowicz, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Martin Wong, as well as recent works, like Shan Kelly’s With Curators Like These, Who Needs a Cure (2015), which reads, “MY AIDS WON’T FIT IN YOUR MUSEUM.”
The slide show caps off a year that has seen a number of high-profile AIDS-related art projects. The Whitney Museum’s inaugural show in its new Meatpacking District home, “America Is Hard to See,” had a gallery dedicated to AIDS art by artists like Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres; the month-long Dirty Looks On Location queer film festival in New York this summer included a number of events that addressed the effects of HIV and AIDS on the LGBTQ community; MoMA PS1’s survey “Greater New York” included a large installation by the activist group Fierce Pussy; and last month, at Trinity Wall Street in Downtown Manhattan, Jordan Eagles unveiled Blood Mirror, a sculpture with the blood of men who are barred from being blood donors because of the FDA’s ban on donations from men who have had sex with men.
The slide show follows below.