Into the Registry: An Artist Member and Community Space (May 2022)

This bi-monthly series invites our community of artists, art lovers, AIDS activists, and beyond to share space with and explore both past and recent artwork from Visual AIDS' Artist Members.

Click here to RSVP for the event.

In the first half of the program a small cohort of Artist Members will share recently created artworks with the public. For this program we will hear from painters David Spiher and Sami Basbous.

In the second half of the program, the curator of our current web gallery will elaborate on the inspiration informing their selection of artworks from our Artist+ Registry, a database of work by artists living with HIV, and those who are no longer with us. The curator will be joined by several other artists, creatives, and thinkers to discuss relevant themes in the web gallery.

For this third iteration of the series, artist and curator Abdullah Qureshi will lead a conversation connected to his current web gallery, “I AM AFRAID OF THE AIDS”. In tandem with the themes of the web gallery, he will also present a special one-time screening of the short film Bomgay by Riyad Vinci Wadia, an Indian filmmaker living with HIV who passed in 2003.

After screening Bomgay, Qureshi will be joined by photographer and Visual AIDS artist member Sunil Gupta and curator and writer Shaunak Mahbubani. Together they will have a conversation about representation of South/West Asian and other non-western artists in the HIV/AIDS canon, building off the ideas presented in “I AM AFRAID OF THE AIDS” and Bomgay.

Bios:

Abdullah Qureshi is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Rooted in traditions of abstraction, he incorporates gestural, poetic, and hybrid methodologies to address autobiography, trauma, and sexuality through painting, filmmaking, and immersive events. Through his ongoing doctoral project, Mythological Migrations: Imagining Queer Muslim Utopias, he examines formations of queer identity and resistance in Muslim migratory contexts. Qureshi has exhibited, conducted lectures, paper readings, and artist talks internationally. In 2017, Qureshi received the Art and International Cooperation fellowship at Zurich University of the Arts, and in 2018, a research fellowship at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research, Boston. In 2019, he joined the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto as a visiting graduate student. Qureshi is currently a Doctoral Candidate at Aalto University, Espoo, and Sessional Faculty at OCAD University, Toronto.

Sunil Gupta is a photographer, artist, educator and curator who completed a doctoral program at the University of Westminster in 2018. Educated at the Royal College of Art, Gupta has been involved with independent photography as a critical practice for many years focusing on race, migration and queer issues. In the 1980s, Gupta constructed documentary images of gay men in architectural spaces in Delhi, his "Exiles" series. The images and texts describe the conditions for gay men in India at the times. Gupta's series "Mr. Malhotra's Party" updates this theme during a time in which queer identities are more open and also reside in virtual space on the internet and in private parties. His early series "Christopher Street, New York" was shot in the mid-1970s as Gupta studied under Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research and became interested in the idea of gay public space.

His work has been shown in many important group exhibitions including "Paris, Bombay, Delhi…" at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, 2011, and "Masculinities" at Barbican, London, 2020. His retrospective took place at The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2020, and Ryerson Image Center, Toronto, 2021. Gupta is a Professorial Fellow at UCA, Farnham, and Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London, and was the Lead Curator for the Houston Fotofest in 2018. Gupta's work is in many private and public collections including, George Eastman House (Rochester, USA); Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (Japan); Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA); Royal Ontario Museum (Canada); Tate (London, UK); Harvard University (Cambridge, USA); and the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA).

Shaunak Mahbubani is a nomadic curator and writer, living between New Delhi and elsewheres. They primarily pursue projects under the exhibition series 'Allies for the Uncertain Futures’ focused on exploring the possibilities of socio-political, ecological and techno-evolutionary futures through the lens of non-duality. Shaunak is interested in complicating boundaries between artwork and the viewer through participatory gatherings, spatial diffusions, and the use of non-white cube spaces. They were a part of Young Curators Academy 2021 (Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin), Prameya Art Foundation's Arts Scribes Awardee 2018-19, participant in Curatorial Intensive South Asia (Khoj/ Goethe Institut, 2017), and Curator, Programming at The Gujral Foundation (2017 - 2018). They have been a part of curatorial engagements at ISCP (New York), apexart (New York), Casa Roshell (Mexico City), Embassy of Switzerland (New Delhi), The Institute of Endotic Research (Berlin), Goethe Institut (New Delhi), Kalakar Theatre (New Delhi), Mumbai Art Room (Mumbai), 1Shanthi Road (Bangalore), and TIFA Working Studios (Pune). Since 2019, they have also been collaborating with artist-curator Vidisha-Fadescha under the moniker 'After Party Collective', creating momentum towards the affirmation of trans*, intersex, and gender-dissident bodies through curatorial and performance projects.

David Spiher has been a member with Visual AIDS for 23 years. He is still doing the same shit, working the medical/insurance industry to keep medicated and making art - to stay alive - physically and creatively. In the words of Carolee Schneemann: “I don’t have a practice, I live by inspiration.” He is just coming off of a couple of years of active grieving, having walked his husband through early onset Alzheimer’s, likely brought about by a confluence of his genetics and HIV/AIDS status. Ralph, his husband, was an active participant/collaborator as well a subject for David's work from 2015 through his passing in 2020. With his death David was left bereft not only emotionally but creatively. Human narratives are not so tidy, and as stated in a recent New York Times review of the revival of Into the Woods - perceptions of “happy endings” really depend on when you end the story.

Sami Basbous is a multi-disciplinary artist; singer/songwriter, composer, painter, sculptor, and creative writer. He has lived in Beirut, Montreal, Lagos, London, Paris, New York, Barcelona, and L.A. He has performed musically, and exhibited his work in many cities. His paintings, music, writings, and installations reflect that. “Farewell Beirut, O Scarlet Tramp” an album released in 2010 blended indie pop rock, electronic, Arabic, African and free-form Jazz.