Continuous Dialogues: Temporalities of HIV/AIDS, a Brazilian exhibition in contact with the world

This post is part of ‘Art, Visual Culture & HIV/AIDS: Local, Regional & Transnational Perspectives’ a guest-edited portfolio by Theo Gordon that collects writings from the ‘Art, Visual Culture & HIV/AIDS: Local, Regional and Transnational Perspectives’ conference hosted by the History of Art Department at the University of York in June of 2025.  Read more about the portfolio here.

Art Against AIDS was a significant exhibition, as it represented one of the first efforts in Brazil to address the disease through art. After Viriato’s participation in the exhibition Tema: AIDS (1993) at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway, he recognized the importance of fostering this discussion in his country of origin and went on to organize exhibitions in the cities of Curitiba, Porto Alegre, and Fortaleza. Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, was the second city to join the project. Porto Alegre is notable in the context of HIV/AIDS for its strong activist response to the lack of resources, exemplified by GAPA-RS (Support Group for AIDS Prevention in Rio Grande do Sul), one of the oldest and most influential AIDS organizations in the country, founded on April 3, 1989. Currently, Porto Alegre has some of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Brazil, despite a decline in recent years. For these reasons, the exhibition addresses both the memory of the disease in the region and the contemporary emergence of these themes.

Before examining the exhibition itself, it is important to highlight the role Visual AIDS played in connecting Ricardo and myself, as two researchers with closely aligned interests who came together to develop a shared project. At the end of 2024, I contacted Visual AIDS to discuss possible ways I could contribute to their ongoing work. I was pleased to receive interest in my research on Rafael França, a Brazilian artist who died of AIDS-related complications in Chicago in 1991 and whose practice left a remarkable legacy in technologically informed artistic experimentation. This exchange sparked my desire to bring França’s work into greater public visibility. Following advice from Ted Kerr, whom I had worked with during my master’s studies in New York, I began exploring ways to pursue this effort in França’s hometown, Porto Alegre, coming across an open call for exhibition programming at MACRS. While researching possible frameworks for the proposal, I encountered Ricardo Ayres’s doctoral thesis, ‘Visual arts and AIDS in Brazil: histories, discourses, and invisibilities’,¹ in which he revisits four exhibitions addressing HIV/AIDS that took place in Brazil between 1993 and 1994, one of which, Art against AIDS, had been presented at MACRS. Although these exhibitions were not directly connected to França’s artistic practice, Ayres’ research revealed a largely overlooked history of artistic and curatorial responses to the AIDS epidemic in Brazil. I saw an opportunity to join forces with Ricardo to revisit and narrate this history through a contemporary lens, one attentive to the dialogue between this marginalised artistic and curatorial work and the situation of HIV/AIDS in Brazil today.

Ricardo: I have worked for several years as an academic researcher on the relationship between visual arts and HIV/AIDS. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, amidst restrictions on movement and social isolation, I completed my doctoral thesis, reflecting on how partially narratives of Brazilian art history have addressed this topic. For many art historians in Brazil, AIDS has been understood only as a particular theme in the work of specific artists, and has been rarely addressed collectively through comparative study of the work of different artists, who, in many cases, knew each other and lived very closely together. In hegemonic narratives, Leonilson (1957-1993) has been centred as the main artist to ‘address’ the topic in the country, while most other artists have been marginalised. For this reason, I analysed and compared several specific exhibitions on AIDS in Brazil, to include: AIDS: Consciousness and Art (Aids: Consciência e Arte, 1993 and 1994), curated by Edilson Viriato; Art Against AIDS (Arte Contra Aids, 1994), a collaboration between Viriato and Paulo Gomes; Culture in Times of AIDS (A Cultura em Tempos de Aids, 2002), and SIDAIDS (2002-2004), organized by Armando Mattos. I also examined the role of HIV/AIDS in the historiography of scholarship on ten Brazilian artists: Leonilson (1957-1993), Rafael França (1957-1991), Hudinilson Jr. (1957-2013), Alex Vallauri (1949-1987), Jorge Guinle (1947-1987), Raul Cruz (1957-1993), Viriato (1966- ), Cláudio Goulart (1954-2005), Otacílio Camilo (1959-1989), and Cláudia Wonder (1955-2010).

Throughout my research, I realized that the histories of art and HIV/AIDS in Brazil have always been directly linked to the international context, since many artists participated in projects in other countries. Already affiliated with the Federal University of Pelotas as a professor, I developed the research project "Histories of art and histories of AIDS from Brazil: discourses on the body and illness in contemporary art," now working in collaboration with students and other researchers, such as João Eduardo Freitas, who arrived at the important moment when I was thinking about submitting an exhibition project to MACRS. We combined our research to propose a celebration of the pioneering exhibition that took place at MACRS thirty years ago, Art Against AIDS, curated by Edilson Viriato and Paulo Gomes, presenting a show that honors and revisits that legacy, Continuous Dialogues: temporalities of HIV/AIDS, in June 2025.

João e Ricardo: Thirty years later, much has changed in the wider context of HIV/AIDS. Today AIDS is a chronic, treatable condition, no longer a death sentence, thanks to an immense struggle for a range of treatments from antiretroviral therapy to PrEP, PEP, and the defense of Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS), which provides free treatment for everyone. Yet stigma still exists, hindering access to treatment, and requiring us to continue talking about HIV/AIDS. Stigma traverses these three decades like a shadow. There are still people suffering, who lack access, who are made invisible. Our aim through this exhibition was to bring together the voices of the past and present, showing their similarities and differences. The contemporary moment shows a greater cultural concern with the representation of women, people of color and transgender people, with whom we sought to engage in dialogue in our project.

In the exhibition we aimed to frame art as protest, memory, and means for the construction of other futures. It was not only about what was lost but also about what we can—and must—still achieve. Because as long as there is stigma, as long as there is exclusion, as long as there is fear, this dialogue must continue. And in that process, art is a powerful tool to transform history—so that life, in all its forms, can exist without fear and without stigma.

The curatorial concept was structured around four thematic sets in the aims of compiling works from or directly linked to the 1994 exhibition, its scarce documentation, works present in the museum's collection, and works produced in the past decade in a distinct artistic and epidemic context in relation to the 1990s: Art Against AIDS, Documentation, the MACRS Archive, and Contemporary Artists. Rather than being rigidly or materially separated within the exhibition space, these thematic sets functioned as conceptual nuclei that guided the curatorial selection and organization of the intermixed works. 

The decision to intermix works across these thematic sets was central to conveying the nonlinear trajectory of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the artistic responses it has generated. By placing historical works and archival traces in proximity to contemporary artistic practices, the exhibition invited viewers to perceive both continuities and ruptures: the scientific and biomedical advances that transformed HIV into a manageable condition for many, the persistent social stigma that continues to shape the lives of those living with the virus, and the shifting aesthetic strategies through which artists have negotiated visibility, mourning, activism, and survival. This spatial juxtaposition foregrounded the epidemic not as a closed historical episode but as an ongoing, contested field marked simultaneously by progress and by unresolved inequalities. In moving through the gallery, visitors encountered these layered temporalities as overlapping rather than sequential, allowing past urgencies to resonate within present debates and revealing how contemporary practices remain informed by earlier modes of resistance and care. The exhibition thus proposed that artistic production operates as a critical site for registering the epidemic’s advancements, setbacks, and transformations, while also sustaining dialogues capable of reactivating historical memory in relation to current challenges.

We chose as our starting point on the left side of the exhibition room's entrance, Elida Tessler’s (1961-) work A First Tear, bringing back the strength of memory that refuses to be silenced. This piece, consisting of a circular metal structure covered in fabric, clearly shows the marks of oxidation, bearing the passage of time, traces, and reminding us that wounds do not heal on their own. This work is part of the Unfinished Speeches (Falas Inacabadas, 1993-) series, and replaced the original artwork that was part of the initial exhibition, which had deteriorated over time. We conceived of this unfinished speech, this ongoing conversation, as a metaphor for the debate about the continuity of HIV/AIDS thirty years later.

Reflecting on MACRS’ role as an institution allowed us to display related artworks from the collection, by artists who addressed aspects of homoeroticism and the epidemic, but who are not always remembered in this context. The generation of Mário Röhnelt (1950-2018), Rogério Nazari (1951-), and Vagner Dotto (1945-1994) experienced the period of sexual freedom that preceded the AIDS crisis, followed by the disease's impact on their personal circles, and on wider conceptions of corporeality at the end of the century, as explored in their paintings, drawings, and collages. Our curation highlighted the often marginalised proximity of these artists to HIV/AIDS, offering a much needed re-evaluation of historical canons about art and the epidemic in Brazil.

Finally, we showed the work of a third group of young artists who are discussing the illness today based on recent changes and reassessments of the epidemic. In Fredericco Restori's (1998-) documentary, Warning Sign - Lory F. (Sinal de Alerta, Lory F., 2021), the filmmaker retraces the musical career of the Porto Alegre artist who died of AIDS-related illness in 1993. Her death cut short her ascending musical career, leading to her cultural oblivion; the release of Restori’s film coincided with a moment of reassessment of her importance to the city, in the inauguration of the Lory F. Stage, a space for musical performances at the Mario Quintana Cultural Center, which houses the MACRS headquarters where the exhibition was held. In the works of Micaela Cyrino (1988-), Hiura Fernandes, and Lírio Nascimento (1990-), racial debates are present, as well as the life experiences of people who contracted the virus through vertical transmission, the experiences of transgender people, and the relationship with childhood. Alongside the work of Matheus Montanari (1996-), which establishes connections between HIV and gay subjectivity during the COVID-19 pandemic, this collection of video works presents contemporary debates that re-signify the other artworks in the exhibition from a dialogical perspective, addressing this topic today, with different eyes, different pains, and different desires.

Including discussions about people of color, transgender individuals, children, and women engages with the changing characteristics and transformations of the disease over time. Vertical transmission is no longer a major issue in the country, as the WHO has certified that mother-to-child transmission is no longer considered a public health problem in Brazil, one of the main issues presented in Lírio and Hiura's video. However, many people grew up living with HIV, and their subjectivities must be acknowledged. People of color constitute a group disproportionately affected by class inequality and structural racism, which limit access to health services; today, they represent the majority of those affected by the disease in the country. This makes it essential to emphasize the intersection of race with gender and sexuality.

At the conference we identified several links and relations with the work of other speakers, opening up the international collaboration networks that characterise both historical artmaking and contemporary dialogue from the perspective of HIV/AIDS. We identified in the production of Beau Gomez (Philippines-Canada) his dialogue with Lírio Nascimento (Brazil), one of the artists participating in our exhibition. In addition to being friends, they have worked on joint projects, such as the video ‘Filament Fortune’ presented by Gomez, co-starring Nascimento, that had been part of Toronto International Film Festival's Viral Interventions program in 2024. In the closing remarks, offered by Benny Nemer, the artist presented the sound installation The Nightbird (2015-2022), in which the names of gay artists who died as a result of HIV/AIDS are sung by the artist imitating the sound of birds. His voice is emitted through a golden megaphone installed in a tree, and the artists' names appear listed inside the exhibition gallery. Among them is José Leonilson, already mentioned as the leading canonical Brazilian artist addressing the disease. Our intention in traveling to York was to present what we understood as a lesser-known perspective on artistic responses to the AIDS epidemic in Brazil. We sought to foreground artists and curators whose trajectories, whether through physical travel and migration, or the circulation of their works, extended beyond national boundaries before, during, and after the so-called height of the AIDS crisis. The experience also prompted deeper reflection on the profound exchanges that continue to emerge between different cultural and artistic contexts shaped by HIV and AIDS worldwide.

At the local level, throughout the development and installation of the exhibition, we partnered with SOMOS NGO, whose Director of Cultural Affairs, Sebastian Inostroza, served as the project’s producer. This collaboration between a civil society organization such as SOMOS, the museum, and academia—through the support of Federal University of Pelotas—proved fundamental not only for addressing the practical demands of the project, but also for cultivating sustained forms of engagement among visitors, artists, students, activists, and cultural workers. Volunteers from SOMOS played an active role throughout both the production and development phases of the exhibition, contributing to tasks that ranged from logistical coordination and installation support to mediation activities and public programming. Their involvement extended the project beyond institutional boundaries, reinforcing its community-based dimension and ensuring that the exhibition remained attentive to the lived realities and histories it sought to engage. Each institution contributed distinct forms of expertise, infrastructure, and social reach: the museum provided the spatial and curatorial framework, the university offered academic support and facilitated student participation, and the NGO mobilized local networks while foregrounding activist knowledge and community experience. As such, the exhibition echoed a fundamental aspect of historical responses to AIDS: the necessity of cross-sector collaboration and the pooling of collective efforts in the face of crisis.

Although the exhibition was initially conceived as a revisitation of Art Against AIDS (1994), it soon became clear that this framework also offered an opportunity to foreground other dimensions of artistic responses to HIV/AIDS, both historical and contemporary, as well as to introduce critical contextual layers that were not fully articulated in the original exhibition. We managed to bring together people interested in discussing HIV/AIDS and art at different times, from different perspectives, producing dialogues that did not end with the closing of the exhibition, but continue to generate reflections and meanings.

João Eduardo Freitas is a Brazilian researcher, filmmaker, and curator specializing in queer memory, speculative historiography, and film. With a background in law and a master’s degree in Liberal Studies from The New School, João explores the intersections of film, memory, and marginalized narratives. His work spans short films showcased at international festivals and curatorial projects focusing on LGBTQIA+ histories and HIV/AIDS cultural responses in Brazil. João’s approach blends academic inquiry with creative storytelling, aiming to challenge dominant narratives and amplify overlooked voices. He is currently developing both film and curatorial projects and a PhD student at PUC-Rio in the communications department.

Ricardo Ayres is an art historian and visual artist, and Professor at Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel, Brazil). He has a Doctorate and Master in Visual Arts (UFRGS, Brasil), with an area of concentration in History, Theory and Art Criticism. He is coordinator of the project ‘Histories of art and histories of AIDS from Brazil: discourses on the body and illness in Contemporary Art’, and a member of the Brazilian Art History Committee (CBHA). He is author of the book Miasmas and AIDS metaphors in the visual arts (2021). His research interests revolve around contemporary art and its history based on intersections with the body, HIV/AIDS and sexuality.