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Visual AIDS is excited to announce our new Programs Manager, Kyle Croft. Kyle has worked with Visual AIDS as our Programs Associate since 2018, and as the Project Manager for Day With(out) Art since 2016.
From Kyle:
I am thrilled to continue working with Visual AIDS in my new role as Programs Manager. My work with Visual AIDS began with an internship when I moved to New York at the end of 2015. I found out about the organization through some Play Smart cards I found at MIX NYC, the queer experimental film festival, and was inspired by the idea that a small arts organization could affect change and start conversations by commissioning and distributing artist projects.
My first task as an intern was assisting with a screening of ALTERNATE ENDINGS at the Studio Museum in Harlem; in 2016 I became the Project Manager for Day With(out) Art, coordinating the production and distribution of annual video programs for December 1, World AIDS Day. In January 2018, I became the Programs Associate and began working on other Visual AIDS programs, such as LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN and the International Curatorial Residency. In 2018 I also had the opportunity to curate the exhibition Cell Count with Asher Mones, which examined the ongoing issue of HIV criminalization.
I have been immensely grateful to have the opportunity to work with Visual AIDS while also completing my Masters degree in Art History at Hunter College. My academic work has extended directly from my experience at Visual AIDS—I’ve presented on the work of Barton Lidicé Beneš and Teiji Furuhashi at academic conferences, and my thesis considers the origins of Day Without Art in a broad art historical frame.
In my work, I strive to acknowledge the ongoing presence and urgency of the epidemic, and to question the assumed centrality and neutrality of people who are HIV negative. I am motivated by the idea that we are all living with HIV, an idea expressed by Artist Member Charles Long in I am HIVx (2018), a broadside made for Cell Count in collaboration with Christopher Paul Jordan. Regardless of serostatus, we are all affected by the epidemic—through friends, family, and lovers, but also in the way that we talk about health, medicine, and the responsibilities of our government, how we negotiate sex and vulnerability, and how we understand care, resistance, and memory.
More than anything, I have felt nurtured and supported by the Visual AIDS community, and I’m thankful to be a part of such a broad and diverse network of artists, activists, historians, curators, and friends. I am looking forward to continuing to deepen these relationships, and to allow my work to be informed and inspired by the rich collective knowledge and history surrounding the organization.