Visual AIDS

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. Featuring artists working around 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. 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 (@amilshivji ), Hiura Fernandes (@transmorfa ), Ésery Mondesir (@gadepabouleje ), and J Triangular (@jtriangular ).

THIS SATURDAY: Steven Arnold’s Sex & Spirit Symposium at Del Vaz Projects | April 25, 2026, 12-6 PM Entry $15 | Free for students | Link in Bio Panel 4: Cruising the Archive: Comparative Chronicles of Illimitable Lives | 5:00 PM The culminating conversation of the program, this panel is comprised of directors and curators from the symposium’s co-sponsors: @alexisbardjohnson from the ONE Archives at USC Libraries, where Steven Arnold’s archive is now housed; @yung_sch0lar from the GLBT Historical Society Museum, where Steven Arnold: Cocktails in Heaven will travel for the Further Triennial in 2027; and #KyleCroft from Visual AIDS, where a selection of Arnold’s papers are preserved. With diverse philosophies on archival methods, panelists discuss their varying approaches to archives that are often shaped by ephemeral experiences, intimate settings, and cultural erasure. Steven Arnold’s Sex & Spirit Symposium is an afternoon-long program inspired by the multidisciplinary artist Steven Arnold (b. 1943, Oakland, CA; d. 1994, Los Angeles, CA) whose work is currently on view at Del Vaz Projects. Presented by @delvazprojects in partnership with @onearchivesusc , Los Angeles @glbt_history , San Francisco & @visual_aids , New York This program was made possible thanks to the support of Del Vaz Projects Patron Sean Leffers. _ Steven Arnold: Cocktails in Heaven is made possible with support from the Del Vaz Projects Patrons Karen Hillenburg, Stacy & John Rubeli, and Berry Stein. Del Vaz Projects’ exhibitions, publications, and public programming are made possible through a Multi-Year Program Support grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; a Board-Directed grant from The Teiger Foundation; the Organizational Support Program and a Community Access & Participation grant from the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs; and the Organizational Grant Program from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Department of Arts and Culture. @stevenarnoldarchive #stevenarnold @delvazprojects #delvazprojects @warholfoundation #warholgrantee @teigerfoundation @lacountyarts

🪲NEXT THURSDAY🪲artists Tesora Garcia and Zacarías González come together to build an evening that questions our physical and spiritual nourishment inside of extractive, colonial systems. As artists who hold embodied and nuanced relationships to health and wellness through the experiences of transness and/or living with HIV, Garcia and Gonzáles will prompt us to examine our collective power and potential. Tesora Garcia will lead a ceremony in which we will absorb “energy food” from an insect guide for purposes of healing and self-transformation. After the performance ceremony concludes, we will share a communal food moment led by Zacarías González that reflects on food sovereignty and its denial to communities deemed as other. Together, the artists will provide a meditative and intentional space for collective healing and exploration. This event is organized by Center for Performance Research and Blake Paskal, Programs Director of Visual AIDS, an organization that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV-positive artists, and preserving legacies during the ongoing AIDS epidemic. 💚💚💚 OPEN DOOR Tesora Garcia and Zacarías González, curated by Blake Paskal, Visual AIDS Thursday April 23 at 7 P.M. 🎟 Tickets: $0-$25, pay what you can, 🔗 in bio 📍CPR, 361 Manhattan Ave, Williamsburg @tesoragarcia @zacariasggonzalez @the_gayze @visual_aids 📸 Performance documentation from Pocahontas Revised by Tesora Garcia. Courtesy the artist.

RSVP NOW: Steven Arnold’s Sex & Spirit Symposium at Del Vaz Projects | April 25, 2026, 12-6 PM Entry $15 | Free for students | Link in Bio Steven Arnold’s Sex & Spirit Symposium is an afternoon-long program inspired by the multidisciplinary artist Steven Arnold (b. 1943, Oakland, CA; d. 1994, Los Angeles, CA) whose work is currently on view at Del Vaz Projects. With a keynote by Jarrett Earnest followed by four panels, the program frames Steven Arnold’s life as a departure point for conversations about how queer sensibilities—often eclectic, self-directed, and defying categorization—have shaped creative, cultural, and activist movements over the last century. Highlighting Los Angeles as fertile ground for radical and mystical world-building, participants, including artists, writers, curators, and cultural workers, explore queer lives, spaces, and scenes as expressed through biography, nightlife, aesthetics, spirituality, and preservation. Reflecting on Arnold’s expansive universe in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, and in the face of institutionalized ignorance, this symposium emphasizes the urgency of celebrating and safeguarding queer archives such as Arnold’s—one among a vast legacy of artists whose lives were lost to AIDS—with the greatest sensitivity and authenticity. Presented by @delvazprojects in partnership with @onearchivesusc , Los Angeles @glbt_history , San Francisco & @visual_aids , New York This program was made possible thanks to the support of Del Vaz Projects Patron Sean Leffers. _ Steven Arnold: Cocktails in Heaven is made possible with support from the Del Vaz Projects Patrons Karen Hillenburg, Stacy & John Rubeli, and Berry Stein. Del Vaz Projects’ exhibitions, publications, and public programming are made possible through a Multi-Year Program Support grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts @warholfoundation ; a Board-Directed grant from The Teiger Foundation; the Organizational Support Program and a Community Access & Participation grant from the City of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs; and the Organizational Grant Program from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Department of Arts and Culture.

We’re thrilled to share that the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, has acquired Frederick Weston’s 2010 work ‘Pete and Repeat.’ ‘Pete and Repeat’ is one of a series of large collages on board covered with densely layered patterns of C-print photographs taken by the artist. The images document Weston’s bedroom and the different states of its contents: many show clothing—strewn across the floor and organized on racks—and walls layered with collages and images as he prepared to move out of the Breslin SRO (Single Room Occupancy) when the building was transformed into a luxury hotel. The photographs are organized and collaged into optical patterns that activate the generative tension between order and chaos. Frederick Weston (1946-2020) was a self-taught, interdisciplinary artist who worked in a variety of media, including collage, drawing, sculpture, photography, photocopy, performance, and creative writing. Born in Memphis, TN, and raised in Detroit, MI, Weston moved to New York to enter the world of art and fashion in the early 1970’s. Over the course of his life in New York, he developed a vast encyclopedic archive of images, objects, and ephemera related to fashion, the body, advertising, AIDS, race, and queer subjects. Weston’s Estate is represented by Gordon Robichaux where he presented his first solo exhibition in New York in 2019. In 2020, Ortuzar Projects, in collaboration with Gordon Robichaux, presented a forty-year survey of Weston’s work. His site-specific installation at the Ace Hotel gallery in New York was celebrated in the New York Times, and he received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Roy Lichtenstein Award. In 2021, Visual AIDS published Frederick Weston and Samuel R. Delany, a book dedicated to Weston’s work through a long-form interview between Weston and Delany. Weston was a Visual AIDS artist member from 1998-2020. IMAGES: Frederick Weston ‘Pete And Repeat’ 2010, Mixed media on foam core board, 40 x 32 in #FrederickWeston @frederickweston @kjentleson #GordonRobichaux @visual_aids @highmuseumofart

RESCHEDULED! Join Visual AIDS on Sunday March 29 (2pm) @whitneymuseum for a panel discussion with David Hirsh, Penny Arcade @penny_arcade_forever and Agosto Machado focused on the David Hirsh Tapes Collection at Visual AIDS. The event will feature clips from interviews with Steve Lott, Martin Wong, and Frank Moore. Between 1990 and 1995, the journalist David Hirsh recorded more than 600 tapes of interviews and oral histories with over 300 artists who were active in the queer arts scene of downtown New York. Hirsh’s relentless preservation effort through the tapes, as well as the Visual AIDS Archive he co-founded in 1994 with artist Frank Moore (1946-2013), was a race against time during the most fatal years of the AIDS crisis in the United States. In 2025, Hirsh donated his entire tape collection to Visual AIDS, who has recently secured a grant to digitize and make the tapes available to the public. The panel is introduced by Kyle Croft and Jacs Rodriguez of Visual AIDS, and moderated by art historian Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez @rstloup Please RSVP for this free event. Image: Sheyla Baykal, “Penny Arcade, David Hirsh, and Frank Moore, among others, at the Day With(out) Art Action at the Met”, 1994. Crop from gelatin silver print contact sheet, 8.5 x 11”. Courtesy Sheyla Baykal Archive and Soft Network.

Join Visual AIDS for a conversation with Visual AIDS co-founder Robert Atkins on the occasion of his new book, AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War: Selected Writings of Robert Atkins. He will be joined by Sarah Schulman and Jackson Davidow to discuss the Culture War, defined as a Christian Nationalist assault on the increasingly multicultural society and liberal ethos that emerged in the 1960s in the new form of attacks by Americans on other Americans. Media-savvy politicians and religious figures took advantage of relatively new and little-known groups–artists, queers, and people with AIDS. Despite their initial lack of support, members of these groups soon applied their art and media practices to effectively oppose authoritarian inroads on the Constitution’s First-Amendment guarantees of free expression. “But,” Atkins wonders,” “have we already slid too far back from the future to avoid another full-scale medical crisis?” To reserve a copy of AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War please write to us at [email protected] with “please reserve AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War for March 1 event” in the subject line. Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us! This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011. Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served. Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@bgsqd

Thank you for making Postcards from the Edge 2026 a success! Together we raised over $150k with 1566 artworks and over 600 collectors, even in the middle of a snowstorm. This was a crucial year for us, and you helped us exceed our goal. Thank you to our incredible volunteers and our amazing host gallery @berrycampbell A special thanks to @a.i.r.nyc for providing air filters to keep our party and exhibition safer. Until next year! Thank you, thank you Photos courtesy of @george_sierzputowski

Visual AIDS is excited to announce Alex Lenczycki, Chava Maeve Krivchenia, Claudia Mattos, Diogene Artiles, and Helena Shaskevich as our 2025–26 Research Fellows. Claudia Mattos’s research proposes the first comprehensive art historical study of Craig Coleman’s (1961-1994) Miami-era practice, situating Coleman’s fusion of visual art, writing, and performance within the city’s queer cultural history and the legacy of AIDS-era expression in South Florida. @clamatto Chava Maeve Krivchenia will sort through Garland Eliason-French’s (1942-1996) correspondence, personal journals, photographs, art documentation, and ephemera, and plans to map the artist’s creative influences, with a particular focus on her time spent in Chicago and the Midwest. @cmkriv Alex Lenczycki will seek to illuminate the life and work of Gin Louie (1947-1994), a pivotal figure and former director of the Lower East Side Print Shop in the 1980s, with particular interest in his artistic transition to autobiographical assemblage following his AIDS diagnosis. Helena Shaskevich will research artist Michael Tidmus’s (1951-2012) HyperCard projects with a specific focus on his 1987 The AIDS Stack. Made just prior to the widespread use of the world wide web, the work is an early example of AIDS related computer activism. @helena_shask Diogene Artiles will look at the work of Miguel Ferrando (1957-1996), Dominican artist active in New York City’s downtown art scene during the 1980s and 1990s. Diogene is interested in Ferrando’s use of religious iconography, Dominican national symbols, and his artistic community and inspirations in New York City. @diogene.wav Stay tuned — writing commissioned through the fellowship will be published on the Visual AIDS Journal in Fall 2026.

Join us on January 31 at 2pm for 💗LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN,💗 MoMA PS1's and @visual_aids ’ annual letter-writing party supporting women living with HIV. This year, over 600 women around the world will receive personalized letters and specially designed valentines from artist members J. Hartz (@jhartzstudio ) and Alexander Robateau. @lovepositivewomen , established in 2013 by Visual AIDS artist @jessicalynnwhitbread , uses Valentine’s Day as a backdrop to send love and care to women living with HIV. After the MoMA PS1 letter-writing party, letters and special valentines will be mailed worldwide. Since 2015, the project has distributed 4,000+ cards, helping fight stigma, foster community, and empower women living with HIV. ❤️🖋️Drop by the 3rd floor of MoMA PS1 this Saturday, no RSVP needed.

It’s time for another year of @lovepositivewomen , the annual project that distributes hundreds of heartfelt valentines to women across the world living with HIV. This year, Visual AIDS collaborated with two artist members, J. Hartz and Alexander Robateau, to create special-edition valentines. These valentines, along with letters of love from our community, will be mailed to women all over the world in time for February 14. Are you interested in writing caring letters to a woman/women living with HIV? As women sign up to receive a valentine, they will be asked to share one or two interests/hobbies so that a personalized letter can be written for them. Come to our letter-writing party to help pen individualized letters to the 600+ recipients. Join us on January 31 at 2pm on the 3rd floor of @momaps1 No RSVP is required and the museum is free. Are you a woman or femme living with HIV who would like to receive a valentine and letter? Click the link in our bio to sign up to receive a card. More about the project: Visual AIDS is proud to partner with ongoing collaborator MoMA PS1 for our annual project LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN. We are also proud to partner with the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, who printed the edition of Alexander Robateau’s valentines. LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN is an international series of events that uses Valentine’s Day as a backdrop, creating a platform for individuals and communities to engage in public and private acts of love and caring for women living with HIV. LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN is an ongoing project established by Visual AIDS artist member @jessicalynnwhitbread in 2013. After the event, the valentines will be mailed around the world to HIV-positive women in time for Valentine’s Day. Women living with HIV often experience isolation and stigma and face specific challenges around relationships, motherhood, and healthcare. Since 2015, the project has distributed over 4,000 cards in order to fight stigma, create community, and empower women living with HIV.

Our sale is now LIVE at postcards.visualaids.org! Shop 1566 artworks for just $100! In-person viewing and pick up today only, Jan 24 at Berry Campbell (524 w 26th) from 12-5pm ONLY There will be no in person hours on Sunday, Jan 25 but the sale will continue online! Happy shopping! @berrycampbell