For Day With(out) Art 2020, Visual AIDS presents TRANSMISSIONS, a program of six new videos considering the impact of HIV and AIDS beyond the United States. The video program brings together artists working across the world: Jorge Bordello (Mexico), Gevi Dimitrakopoulou (Greece), Las Indetectables (Chile), George Stanley Nsamba (Uganda), Lucía Egaña Rojas (Chile/Spain), and Charan Singh (India/UK).
The program does not intend to give a comprehensive account of the global AIDS epidemic, but provides a platform for a diversity of voices from beyond the United States, offering insight into the divergent and overlapping experiences of people living with HIV around the world today. The six commissioned videos cover a broad range of subjects, such as the erasure of women living with HIV in South America, ineffective Western public health campaigns in India, and the realities of stigma and disclosure for young people in Uganda.
As the world continues to adapt to living with a new virus, COVID-19, these videos offer an opportunity to reflect on the resonances and differences between the two epidemics and their uneven distribution across geography, race, and gender.
In 1989, to make the public aware that AIDS can touch everyone and to inspire positive action, Visual AIDS presented the first Day Without Art—organizing museums and art institutions nationwide to cover up their artwork, darken their galleries, and even close for the day—to symbolically represent the chilling possibility of a future without art or artists. Since then, Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative annual project in which organizations worldwide present exhibitions, screenings and public programs to highlight work by HIV+ artists and artwork addressing current issues around the ongoing AIDS pandemic. TRANSMISSIONS is the 31st annual Day With(out) Art project.
Founded in 1988, Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness through producing and presenting visual art projects, while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS, and preserving the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement. www.visualaids.org
TRANSMISSIONS will premiere on November 30 at 6pm EST livestreaming at visualaids.org/transmissionsas part of a special online event, followed by a panel discussion with the commissioned artists, moderated by Jih-Fei Cheng. RSVP here.
The videos will also screen in 20+ locations around the world, both online and in-person. See here for a growing list of screening locations.
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