Visual AIDS & the Red Ribbon: Creating an Icon

Speakers included:

Penny Arcade, member of the Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus.

Allen Frame, original Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus member who has worked to maintain the Red Ribbon’s history for decades.

Mondo Guerra, fashion designer and winner of Project Runway All Stars, who will provide contemporary reflections on the role of fashion and design to support artists and AIDS-related causes.

Marc Happel and Harvey Weiss, who originally coordinated the Celebrity Red Ribbon Calvacade, winner of best float in the 1992 New York City Pride March.

Hope Sandrow, artist and co-founder with artist Frank Moore of Red Ribbon Bees at the Park Avenue Armory Women’s Shelter, during which ribbon makers were compensated for creating Red Ribbons to be distributed widely by Visual AIDS.

Visual AIDS 30^th Anniversary Programming was supported by a Humanities New York Action Grant.

Speaker Biographies:

Penny Arcade aka Susana Ventura is a performance artist, actress, writer, documentary video and theater maker. She was part of the Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus and present at the birth of the Red Ribbon.

Allen Frame is a photographer, writer and educator, represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York. He was a member of the Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus and was part of the group who created the Red Ribbon. He also co-created and toured the photo projection piece Electric Blanket about the AIDS pandemic.

Mondo Guerra is a designer and social influencer whose innovative style and bold prints have caught the fashion world’s imagination, while his truth and courage captured the hearts of fans around the world when he first revealed his HIV+ status on “Project Runway” Season 8. Mondo’s visual aesthetics often carry a social message that intersects his art with his advocacy. The Denver born artist was commissioned to create a custom World AIDS Day design for the 2015 Subaru Legacy that was revealed during Art Basel, Miami and is a spokesperson for Merck’s iDesign HIV/AIDS educational initiative.

Marc Happel has been designing costumes for stage and screen for the past 35 years, from Broadway, to Hollywood, to Wigstock, to the Metropolitan Opera, and now as Costume Director of NYC Ballet. As a member of the Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus, he collaborated on the creation and production of the Red Ribbon, and along with Harvey Weiss co-produced the Celebrity Ribbon Cavalcade, debuting it at the 1992 New York LGBTQ Pride March before taking it to multiple fund raising venues as an outreach tool for HIV/AIDS advocacy.

Patrick O'Connell was the Director of Visual AIDS during the early 1990s, when the Red Ribbon initially reached widespread international prominence.

Hope Sandrow is a conceptual artist whose multidisciplinary art practice is her ‘way’ of life, through the mediums of still, video, mixed media, installation, sculpture, new media, performance and social practice, presenting the natural history of everyday life. Her public art project Artist and Homeless Collaborative (1990–96) included posters with the Guerrilla Girls and the “Armory Ribbon Bee Project” with artist Frank Moore and Visual AIDS, discussed in her video interview with Artforum.com (2016).

Harvey Weiss is a painter, photographer, graphic artist, and decorative artist whose work has been exhibited and published in the U.S. and Europe. As a member of the Visual AIDS Artists' Caucus, he worked on such projects as Day Without Art, and The Archive Project, collaborated in creating and producing the Red Ribbon, and with Marc Happel co-produced the Celebrity Ribbon Cavalcade which he designed and they debuted at the 1992 New York LGBTQ Pride March before travelling to several benefit venues raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis.