Kay Rosen Tote

In 2013, Visual AIDS' 25th year, Kay Rosen creates AIDS ON GOING GOING ON as a powerful reminder that AIDS is far from over.

Available in the Visual AIDS Store - while supplies last.

Kay Rosen - Statement and Bio As I thought of a message about AIDS to be carried around on a tote bag, it was important to me to express, within a verbal micro universe of a few bold words, that AIDS is far from over. Because of the great strides in the treatment of HIV/AIDS and the increasing awareness and prevention of it, we are tempted to be complacent and to think of it without the urgency that we used to. However HIV/AIDS is On Going, as the bag says. Fortunately individuals and groups, such as the great Visual AIDS, continue to confront it. There is a symmetry to On Going and Going On. The inverted position of two words makes all the difference between the persistent presence of the disease, On Going, and Going On, the equally persistent efforts to fight and overcome it.

Drawing on her academic background in linguistics, Kay Rosen uses language as her primary material and subject, creating text-based works that explore the ways that language can be represented visually. Playing with different approaches to typography and layout, Rosen's work often employs puns, anagrams, and textual puzzles, forcing the viewer to consider new ways of reading and approaching language.

Rosen's work has been exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions and projects at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the MIT List Visual Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Aspen Art Museum, and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in New Zealand. She has also been included in notable group exhibitions such as Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language at the Museum of Modern Art (2012), Prospect 1 New Orleanscurated by Dan Cameron, and the 2000 Whitney Biennial. Her work is the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Norton Family Collection.

Available in the Visual AIDS Store - while supplies last.