To mark World AIDS Day, a collection of short videos that generate the connections between HIV and other forms of illnesses and disabilities will be screened on 1 December 2023 at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde.
The program, Day With(out) Art: Everyone I Know Is Sick, is in collaboration with Visual AIDS, a New York-based non-profit organization committed to fighting the immunodeficiency syndrome by utilizing art, provoking dialogue and supporting HIV+ artists.
In Viejito/Enfermito/Grito (Old Man/Sick Man/Shout), Chicana filmmaker and writer Dolissa Medina partners with San Francisco Bay Area multidisciplinary artist and immigrant Ananias P. Soria in a performance of the folkloric Danza de los Viejitos (the Dance of the Old Men).
Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, where the dance originated, Soria interprets the movements through the lens of his long-term HIV-related conditions, his spirituality and his search for a place in the world.
Heart Murmurs presents the poetic dialogue between Hong Kong-based filmmaker and artist Dorothy Cheung and a certain Dean, a young man in Hong Kong, as he reflects on his experiences living with a congenital disability and HIV during the years of the COVID pandemic. In this piece, he expresses his sense of self in the face of regular medical challenges.
In This Bed I Made, Montreal- and Toronto-based visual artist Beau Gomez exhibits the bed as a place of solace and agency beyond just a site of illness or isolation. It narrates the shared stories of two Filipinos living with HIV and explores modes of care, restoration and abundance in the midst of pandemic pervasion.
Losing the Light is an experimental self-portrait of Kurt Weston, an artist working primarily with photography, as he depicts his bitter battle to continue to live as a long-term AIDS survivor who has lost his vision to CMV retinitis. It evokes the dissolution and fragmentation of his body, representing the impact of blindness, long-term HIV infection and the cumulative effects of decades of antiretroviral medication.
Brazilian advocate Lili Nascimento worked with multidisciplinary artist, cultural producer and product designer Hiura Fernandes in Aquela criança com AID$ (That Child with AID$). Born with HIV in 1990, Nascimento has expanded narratives about living with HIV beyond the limited images and ideologies that permeate the AIDS industry.
Day With(out) Art: Everyone I Know Is Sick is open to the public. It runs on 1 December at the Agusto-Rosario Gonzalez Theater of the Benilde Taft Campus in Malate, Manila.