By insisting AIDS “is still not over,” Visual AIDS foregrounds the differences and inequities expressed by queer/trans/Black/Indigenous/Latinx artists and other artists of color living with HIV as a legitimate storyline to be presenced in the canon. The Visual AIDS archive has transformed narratives of American art through its support of art and artists in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In collaboration with Visual AIDS, we ask, what is at stake in remembering the aesthetics and feelings of past viral times? 

 

Each fall, Visual AIDS presents a day-long annual research symposium highlighting new research that speculates on the lives and aesthetic legacies of artists who have been lost to AIDS. The 2025 research symposium will feature presentations, roundtable discussions and/or performances generated from the Aesthetics of Ruination project and together with a complimentary session uplifting research currently being conducted by this year’s Visual AIDS research fellows. We envision the public symposium as an exploratory space for performative, conceptual, emotional and sensory reflection and speculation of ‘pasts’ still (to be) lived. 

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For more information about Visual AIDS please visit http://visualaids.org/