VISUAL AIDS | ART AS ACTIVSM

In the lead-up to World AIDS Day, first celebrated as World AIDS Day a Day Without Art, the Visual AIDS Symposium at MoMA became a powerful space of remembrance, resilience, and creative defiance. Hosted by Visual AIDS, the leading organization archiving and amplifying the art and activism of the AIDS epidemic, this event transcended mere commemoration. It was a dynamic, intergenerational call to remember, resist, and create with urgency, bringing together artists, activists, and scholars who gathered to honor the past and affirm the vital legacy of those who have shaped our culture through struggle and defiance. Visual AIDS Executive Director Kyle Croft voiced this urgency, stating, “AIDS is not just a story of loss but of a profound shaping of our art and culture. To forget that is to betray an entire generation.” The day became a pledge—an enduring commitment to keep alive the creative defiance and resilience that defines those we honor and the work that remains.

Joey Terrill, an artist who embodies the resilience and fierce endurance honored in this gathering, is at the heart of this defiance. Living with HIV for over four decades, Terrill’s life and art reveal the emotional landscapes of survival, transforming the intimate into a message of universal impact. In his still-life paintings, he gathers familiar objects from daily life—pill bottles, household items—setting them against a backdrop that feels ordinary and monumental. Through these objects, he invites us into a world where survival is both a routine and a quiet rebellion. For Terrill, survival is an act of defiance, a way of carving out space in a world that often fails to see or understand these lived realities.

A poignant moment illustrates this divide. Terrill recalls sitting in a diner with friends, mourning a recent loss, while at the next table, a lively group chatted away, untouched by the same shadows. The contrast between these worlds—grief and the obliviousness of the everyday—became a turning point for Terrill, crystallizing his mission to bring the realities of HIV into shared spaces. His art, then, is not merely for reflection; it’s a demand to break through silence, to make visible what is often hidden, and to ensure that these stories and struggles are acknowledged in the places we inhabit daily. His work insists that HIV’s impact belongs not only to private grief but to our collective consciousness.

Terrill’s work also confronts cultural stereotypes, moving beyond personal reflection to engage with identity and community. His Homeboy Beautiful series, a satirical, witty exploration of queer Latinx identity, uses humor as a disarming bridge. “If you can make someone laugh, they’re more open to hearing what you have to say, even if it’s difficult or challenging,” Terrill explains. For him, humor isn’t just a tool; it’s a survival mechanism, an invitation to connect across discomfort. Through laughter, he invites audiences to let down their guard to engage with challenging realities without retreating. This fusion of humor and intimacy aligns Terrill with a larger tradition of resilience through vulnerability, a powerful thread linking him to those honored at the symposium—a reminder that resilience often takes many forms, from the tender to the defiant.

Scholar Rob Hernandez reshapes our understanding of memory and resilience, challenging us to think differently about how we honor those lost to HIV/AIDS. For Hernandez, archiving is not a passive act of documentation but a radical claiming of space, a way to keep alive the places where real life unfolds. “Art doesn’t belong in a vacuum,” he asserts, reframing archives as dynamic, intimate presences woven into the fabric of our daily lives. His concept, “archival body, archival space,” transforms the archive from clinical preservation into something profoundly personal and immediate, like the private rituals that sustain us in our homes. Hernandez’s vision builds upon Terrill’s mission to make what is often hidden visible, inviting us to consider our everyday spaces as living archives—spaces where memories of resilience, survival, and joy continue to breathe.

Hernandez’s approach is a powerful reminder that memory is not confined to institutions or museums; it’s rooted in the familiar, the domestic, and the profoundly personal. Just as Terrill’s art transforms private struggle into public awareness, Hernandez urges us to see our homes, kitchens, and bedrooms as vessels of remembrance. Each of these spaces, he suggests, holds fragments of our shared history, preserving the legacies of those who came before us. This perspective invites us to reimagine remembering as something as organic and nourishing as a family recipe, a tradition that sustains and connects us across generations. In doing so, Hernandez’s work challenges us to see remembrance as an active, radical presence in our lives.

This spirit of radical visibility and remembrance echoes vividly in Maria Jose Maldonado’s tribute to her aunt, Bianca Exotica Maldonado—a trans-Latina whose life became her art. Bianca’s unapologetic presence, whether on shows like Jenny Jones or Phil Donahue, embodied resilience and inspired those around her with a fierce authenticity. Maria’s film, My Fierce Aunt Bianca, is more than just a family history; it is an act of reclamation, an effort to ensure that Bianca’s spirit endures as a vibrant symbol of trans resilience. As Hernandez seeks to reclaim archival spaces, Maria’s work pulls Bianca’s story from a world that sought to contain her, preserving it as an audacious beacon of joy and defiance. Through Maria’s eyes, Bianca’s life continues to resonate, standing as a testament to the courage required to be seen and celebrated in one’s whole, unfiltered truth.

Ruby Sutton’s exploration of artist Luis Frangella reveals a quiet yet unyielding resilience that finds beauty even in decay. Frangella, an Argentine artist embedded in New York’s East Village scene, was known for discovering poetry in the everyday grittiness around him. His close friend David Wojnarowicz once remarked that Frangella could look at a hot, grimy street and still see “the pearls of water spilling from a fire hydrant.” This vision of tenderness amid the harshness of urban life became even more urgent as Frangella’s health declined. His work shifted, evolving into meditations on impermanence and fragility, capturing life’s delicate, fleeting beauty as he confronted his mortality. In Frangella’s art, there is a profound insistence on noticing and valuing the small and tender details that illness and loss often threaten to erase.

Frangella’s work echoes the themes explored by Terrill, Hernandez, and Maldonado, who also wrestle with the power of visibility and the importance of remembrance. Frangella’s still lifes and intimate portraits reveal the power of art to honor what is transient, to hold space for moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through his final works, he offers a visual legacy that resonates with Sutton’s exploration: resilience can manifest as an appreciation for life’s subtleties, a commitment to bearing witness even as time slips away. Frangella’s pieces remind us that resilience is as much about cherishing life as it is about defying the forces that would diminish it.

In Eduardo Carrera’s reflections on George Febres, resilience takes on a bolder, more flamboyant shape woven through humor and camp. Febres’s Alligator Shoes—heels topped with baby alligator heads—capture a playful rebellion, challenging norms around masculinity and sensuality with unapologetic wit. Through camp, Carrera highlights queer art’s ability to confront and dismantle taboos, using absurdity as a form of defiance. His analysis of Febres’s work parallels the irreverent courage seen in Terrill’s satire and Maldonado’s radical storytelling, underscoring how humor and boldness can open doors for dialogue where resistance might be met with silence. In Febres’s work, fear transforms into something sensual, daring, and free—a reminder that resilience also means celebrating identity without constraint.

Each artist represented at the symposium embodies a fierce commitment to visibility, resilience, and the refusal to be erased. They stand as testaments to a life of defiance, where every story, every act of creation, insists on being seen and remembered. Together, they remind us that queer lives, with all their complex histories, love, and dreams, are essential. They challenge us to recognize that every individual’s experience in the face of HIV/AIDS is invaluable, woven into the cultural fabric we inherit. Their lives assert the beauty of endurance, confronting the world with a powerful truth: that existence itself, in its fullness, is an act of resilience.

World AIDS Day is not merely a memorial but a rallying cry. It urges us to recognize that these voices and stories are still vibrantly present and deeply necessary. The art and words of these creators reveal that survival is not only about resisting erasure but about living boldly, with humor, memory, tenderness, and defiance. Joey Terrill said, “Our lives are valuable, complex, and full.” The richness of these lives challenges us to find beauty and hope amid loss, pushing us to bear witness and celebrate the courage that defines each narrative, each work of art, and each memory.

Today, as we approach World AIDS Day, we don’t simply look back; we honor a present and a future shaped by creativity, resilience, and an unyielding will to survive. The legacies of these artists—marked by humor, defiance, and love—urge us to carry their stories forward, ensuring that their lives, struggles, and triumphs remain central to our culture, celebrated not just on this day but woven into every day. They remind us that remembrance is active, a pledge to keep what is bold and beautiful alive and to resist silence with every breath.

Note: The Second Annual Visual AIDS Research Symposium, a collaboration between Visual AIDS and MoMA, honors the lives and legacies of artists documented in the Visual AIDS Archive—the largest repository of images and biographies of HIV-positive artists. Visual AIDS, a nonprofit organization, uses art to fight AIDS by fostering dialogue, supporting HIV-positive artists, and preserving their stories.

The symposium featured new research from filmmaker María José Maldonado, writer Ruby Sutton, and scholar Eduardo Carrera, all Visual AIDS Research Fellows, who spotlight underrecognized artists lost to AIDS. The event includes a moderated discussion with Ricardo Montez from The New School, a keynote with artist Joey Terrill and scholar Robb Hernández, and clips from the Body as an Archive oral history project.

This program accompanies the installation ‘In the Shadow of the American Dream,’ featuring works by Luis Frangella, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Agosto Machado, Marion Scemama, Martin Wong, and David Wojnarowicz.