Visual AIDS Marquee Screenings

★ Thurs, Nov 30, 7pm: Whitney Museum of American Art
Screening event followed by a conversation with artists Dorothy Cheung, Beau Gomez, Lili Nascimento, and Hiura Fernandes. Presented in partnership with the Studio Museum in Harlem.

★ Mon, Dec 4, 7pm: LA LGBT Center
Screening event followed by a conversation with artists Dolissa Medina, Ananias P. Soria, and Kurt Weston.

Streaming online at visualaids.org/dwa2023

Inspired by a statement from Cyrée Jarelle Johnson in the book Black Futures, Everyone I Know Is Sick examines how our society excludes disabled and sick people by upholding a false dichotomy of health and sickness.

Inviting us to understand disability as a common experience rather than an exception to the norm, the program highlights a range of experiences spanning HIV, COVID, mental health, and aging. The commissioned artists foreground the knowledge and expertise of disabled and sick people in a world still grappling with multiple ongoing pandemics.

Commissioned Videos

Dorothy Cheung, Heart Murmurs

Heart Murmurs is a poetic dialogue between the filmmaker and Dean, a young man living in Hong Kong. In reflecting on his experience living with a congenital disability and HIV during the first years of the COVID pandemic, Dean expresses his sense of self in the face of regular medical challenges.

Hiura Fernandes and Lili Nascimento, Aquela criança com AID$ (That Child with AID$)

That Child with AID$ tells the story of Brazilian advocate and artist Lili Nascimento, who was born with HIV in 1990. Lili has worked to expand narratives about living with HIV beyond the limited images and ideologies that permeate the AIDS industry.

Beau Gomez, This Bed I Made

This Bed I Made presents the bed as a place of solace and agency beyond just a site of illness or isolation. Through the shared stories of two Filipino men living with HIV, the video explores modes of care, restoration, and abundance in the midst of pandemic pervasion.

Dolissa Medina and Ananias P. Soria, Viejito/Enfermito/Grito (Old Man/Sick Man/Shout)

Ananias, a San Francisco Bay Area artist and immigrant, performs the folkloric Danza de los Viejitos (the Dance of the Old Men). Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, where the dance originates, Ananias interprets its movements through the lens of his spirituality, his long-term HIV-related disabilities, and his search for a place in the world.

Kurt Weston, Losing the Light

Losing the Light reflects the artist's bitter battle to stay in this world as a long-term survivor of AIDS who has lost his vision to CMV retinitis. An experimental self-portrait, the video evokes the dissolution and fragmentation of the artists body, representing the impact of blindness, long-term HIV infection, and the cumulative effects of decades of antiretroviral medication.