Day With(out) Art 2026: seeds in a dying colony

For Day With(out) Art 2026, Visual AIDS presents seeds in a dying colony, a program of four newly commissioned videos that move through the afterlives of colonialism and the ongoing HIV epidemic. Across fractured histories and landscapes marked by extraction, the works trace how systems of power shape the body, memory, and experiences of care.

seeds in a dying colony will feature four newly commissioned short videos by artists from across the world:

Edgar Hudson (Tanzania)
Bruna Kury and Matheus Mello (Brazil/Spain)
Sido Lansari (Morocco/France)
Micaela Cyrino (Brazil)

The program responds to a moment marked by deepening neocolonialism and mass desensitization to violent, preventable death, including recent spikes in HIV cases and deaths. Driven by cuts to international aid programs like USAID and PEPFAR, this resurgence reveals how access to care remains shaped by broader systems of U.S. and Western power that determine whose lives are protected and whose deaths are allowed to pass in silence. 

seeds in a dying colony is an exploration of how systems organized around abandonment and premature death produce disconnection from the self and disruptions of memory, history, and cultural continuity. At the same time, movement, ritual, and beauty emerge as forms of recalibration, methods of reclaiming the body and reorienting toward life within conditions designed to constrain it. 

The title of the program draws from the work of psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon, whose writings on colonial violence and the racialized psyche have been taken up by some AIDS historians and theorists to understand how global health systems, formed through colonial rule, ultimately determine the order, quality, and conditions under which people receive healthcare, while also overwriting indigenous knowledge of healthy, embodied living. Rather than isolating HIV as a singular issue, seeds in a dying colony gestures toward the tension between systems of domination that appear enduring and the latent power and ancestral knowledge that remains in their undoing.

The artists in this program were selected by a jury of filmmakers who each selected an artist to mentor through their production process. The mentors of the 2026 program include Amil Shivji, Hiura Fernandes, Ésery Mondesir, and J Triangular.

The hour-long video program will premiere on December 1, 2026, World AIDS Day/Day With(out) Art. Visual AIDS will partner with museums, galleries, universities, and organizations around the world to present free screenings on/around December 1. Learn more and register as a partner here.

Video Synopses

Edgar Hudson, There is an Elephant in the Room

mentor: Amil Shivji

A young person flees home after a life-altering discovery, carrying the weight of things that cannot be said out loud. He encounters an activist fighting to be heard and a care worker sustaining others through daily acts of survival. Through dance and movement, the film offers a quiet story of survival, exile, and return, asking what it takes to face the elephant that everyone knows is there. 

Bruna Kury and Matheus Mello, Viral Borders: The Geopolitics of a Pandemic

mentor: Hiura Fernandes

A visual manifesto that transforms the HIV virus into a mirror of empire, where data, propaganda, and flesh collide. Through a frenetic digital collage, the film exposes the biopolitical machinery that controls the body and weaponizes borders against life itself.

Sido Lansari, Forevermore

mentor: Ésery Mondesir

Forevermore weaves together archival echoes, poetic fragments, and testimonies of Arab queer lives touched by HIV, spanning generations and geographies. Through the voices of the dead and the living, the film transforms silenced histories into a collective act of remembrance and resistance.

Micaela Cyrino, How to project your voice without causing an earthquake

mentor: J Triangular

Carolina lives alone in an apartment on the outskirts of São Paulo. Every morning she faces the city’s frenetic pace during the long commute from her home to work. In her thoughts, her grandmother’s wisdom always returns; in her headphones, it’s always the same rap. In her bag, she carries the book of recipes, baths, and blessings she inherited from her grandmother and the desire to end the day well.

Edgar Hudson (he/him) is a Tanzanian filmmaker and creative storyteller using art to spark dialogue on climate, identity, and social transformation. An alumnus of the MultiChoice Talent Factory and the Earthshot Youth Programme, he blends cinematic storytelling with advocacy, championing youth-led climate action and cultural consciousness across Africa. His work explores resilience, community, and the urgent need to reimagine our collective future through a more sustainable lens.

Bruna Kury (she/her) is an anarcho-transfeminist filmmaker, performer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work confronts structures of gender, class, and racial oppression. Her cinema challenges the dominant cis-heteronormative system through radical poetic resistance and collective creation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she released two independent films produced in Germany: What If We Started to See Colonization as an Uncontrolled Infection of the Cis-tem? and Gentrification of Affections, both exploring decolonial perspectives and insurgent narratives. In 2025, she released Scorpionikas – Counter-Manifesto with MigrantaFilms, a transcontinental journey amplifying the voices of trans/travesti women, sex workers, and racialized communities through militant and experimental cinema.

Matheus Mello (they/them) is a filmmaker working between Brazil and Spain. Their work explores identity and migration, and they have collaborated in educational workshops with renowned filmmakers such as Lucrecia Martel, Pedro Costa, and Werner Herzog to support emerging talent. They have produced short films, a documentary, and video installations presented at major festivals including Tallinn Black Nights, Raindance, Sitges, IDFA, Rotterdam, and Zinebi. An alumnus of the Sundance Institute, Realness Institute Creative Producer Indaba, EGEDA Next Gen Film FinLab, and Jihlava Emerging Producers, Mello co-founded Migranta Films to create authentic, globally resonant stories across continents.

Sido Lansari (he/him), born 1988, Casablanca, is a multidisciplinary artist living between Paris and Tangier. A laureate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, he directed the Cinémathèque de Tanger from 2019 to 2022. His practice explores identity, gender, and sexuality through embroidery, photography, and film, delving into the silences and erasures of memory. In 2019, his short film The Last Paradise received the Grand Prize at the Festival Chéries-Chéris in Paris. His work has been shown internationally, including at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), and the Medelhavsmuseet (Stockholm).

Micaela Cyrino (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist from Grajaú, São Paulo, Brazil. A painter, embroiderer, and performer, she holds a degree in Visual Arts from Santa Marcelina College. Her work explores the Black female body, memory, and ancestry, developing the idea of “drinkable memories.” HIV-positive since birth, Cyrino uses art to confront stigma and prejudice. She is a member of Trovoa and works as an art educator and consultant.