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Steed Taylor
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BIRTH DAY KNOT
Statement by Steed Taylor
This specific piece commemorates the artist's 40th birthday. As an HlV+ individual in a daily battle with AIDS, each birthday is a milestone of survival. The design incorporates 4 central knots representing each decade of the artist's life. Eight side-knot, 4 on each side of the design, and a 4-way knot at its center, allow the symbolism of the design to be read from all directions. To tie the piece to the specific site and to honor the traditional symbolism of the design, it incorporates the names of the first 40 children born in Hartford on the 40th birthday of the artist, September 30, 1999. The first names of the children were painted in the design, a prayer was said, and the design then painted in, covering over the names.
This project uses an often-overlooked public space as a place for public art yet is safe, subtle and discrete. This road tattoo was painted with black reflective paint on asphalt, lasting about 3 months. Normal traffic and weather conditions will wear the paint away. It will not interfere with traffic markings as they are fairly close in color to the road. Although visible from the sidewalk, this piece I designed is to be viewed from a moving car as it passes over the design.
World AIDS Day/
Day With(out) Art
December 1, 1999
"Bodies" Curator Barbara Hunt
[ bodies
of resistance ]
Defiantely Confronting the Plague
By Holland Cotter
New York Times
The history of American art at the end of the 20th century is at least In part the history of AIDS. Many artists died of the disease. Its presence shaped the Image of the human body as a potent and volatile cultural emblem. Art played an aggressive role In battering away at the politics of denial that surrounded the epidemic.
Despite all this, AIDS went all but unmentioned in the recent rash of retrospectives. One reason is simply that, with the successful use of expensive palliative drugs since the late 1990's, the disease has lost Its aura of emergency for middle-class whites in the United States.
This Is not the case, however, for the rest of the world, where the devastation from AIDS has assumed hurricane force. In the United States more than half of recently reported H.I.V. Infections were among blacks, who constitute only around 12 percent of the population. Last week the United Nations confirmed that some 70 percent of H.I.V. and AIDS cases worldwide were concentrated In Africa, with one of four adults Infected in some countries.
At least some of the emotional weight of these figures finds Its way into "Bodies of Resistance," an exhibition at Real Art Ways In Hartford organized by Visual AIDS under the curatorial hand of Barbara Hunt. Timed to coincide with the eighth International AIDS conference that opened In South Africa In December, the show draws together 17 artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds.
Most of the work In the show (including a temporary outdoor performance-based piece by Steed Taylor) was commissioned for the occasion, which Is always a chancy way to go. But despite some unevenness and the problems of focus built into loosely defined group endeavors, the results feel Individually thought through and collectively strong.
Although AIDS Is the underlying theme, most of the work Is metaphorically fluid rather than Issue-specific, which wasn't necessarily the case in similar exhibitions a decade ago. Still, certain motifs are constants, and one Is the body: present or absent, attractive or repellent, debilitated or empowered.
It assumes grotesque forms In the computer-manipulated photographs of human skin by the artist team Aziz and Cucher and in sardonic "Fantasia"-like cartoon scenarios fastidiously rendered by the painter Thomas Woodruff. A sense of physical vulnerability Is generally pervasive.
Such is the case in Ernesto Pujol's photographs titled "Gulliver's Dream," close-ups of a bound nude man In which we cannot know whether the man has been bound for pleasure or punishment. Threatened violence is made real in Charles LeDray's "Patrick," a doll-size set of workman's clothes (the uniform of an auto mechanic, maybe, or a deliveryman), fastidiously hand-stitched but shredded to tatters below the waist.
The human presence Is only implied in a beautiful abstract piece by Chuck Nanney In which hundreds of tiny cutout and painted canvas circles wind across the gallery wall like human cells on the loose. The same is true in Ken Chu's Installation of shattered Chinese plates neatly arranged on table-size mounds of earth, as if a family picnic were about to take place In a cemetery.
Uninhabited space assumes a life of Its own In Albert J. Winn's photographs of deserted American-Jewish summer camps where ramshackle bunks and empty lockers are eerily reminiscent of Internment camps.
Architectural forms are the basis for two contributions by Rina Banjerjee, an Indian-born New York artist who will be in the coming Whitney Biennial. In one, she has drawn figures of Indian goddesses over blueprints of ventilation systems at Columbia University's Center for Disease Prevention. (A hand-printed collage piece by Nancy Spero In the exhibition similarly Invokes female figures as healers.) In the other work, a corner Installation, a gilded Hindu home altar shaped like a house is invaded by sinister-looking
sari-wrapped tubes, leaving the question open as to what kind of energy Is being pumped into or out of the domestic shrine. .
One of the show's few entirely nonfigurative pieces, "Untitled (T.W.) Virus," by the South African artist Kendell Geers, Is also one of its more Intriguing. A six-foot-square Pandora's box entirely wrapped in red-and-white caution tape, it feels at once threatening and magnetic precisely because it conceals its possibly lethal contents.
Tension produced by information withheld also enlivens the multipart Installation titled "(Mis)communication" by Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamboyé, a Nigerian-born artist living in London who will make his New York solo debut at Thomas Erben Gallery In Chelsea this spring. A video of what looks like visual static, with figures occasionally surfacing, plays in the gallery. It was produced by a camera trained on a hotel room television tuned to a scrambled paidview pornography channel.
The idea of voyeurism is further complicated by the continuous Internet broadcast of a live Image of the gallery Itself, along with the video and any visitors who wander In. With this electronic layering. two politically loaded concepts associated with AIDS - transmission and surveillance - are evoked without any mention of the disease Itself.
Other entries In the show are less oblique In their approach. Skowmon Hastanan, In a small, powerful, no nonsense Installation, addresses the Issue of Western sexual tourism In Thailand. Photographs by Sunil Gupta pair images of his own AIDS treatment with shots of gay clubs in London. (These pictures. along with others by Mr. Gupta, can also be seen at Admit One Gallery In Chelsea through tomorrow.)
The New York artist Barton Lidice Benes deals directly with physical traces of the disease In the context of gay culture. His pigeonholed "Art Reliquarium," one of many such pieces he has made, holds. among other things, a swatch of a St. Marks Baths bathrobe, circa 1971; funerary ashes; and a coil of the red ribbon used to make the first batch of AIDS lapel insignia in 1991.
The original Ribbon Project, sponsored by Visual AIDS, was conceived by the artist Frank Moore, whose painting "Release" Is one of the highlights of the show. The work, was made under great stress. Mr. Moore, who has been battling AIDS for years, experienced a significant dip In health last year. (He has since rebounded.)
Walking In the woods near his home In Deposit, N.Y., near Binghamton, at the time of his setback, he saw plants growing from a rotting fallen tree, and this image,- with some adjustments, inspired the picture. The tree has become his, bare arm, stretched Impossibly long. Bleeding sores and lesions, are turned into miniature ecosystems of plant and insect life. His hand springs open to release a cloud of butterflies. I Like much of the best art that has emerged in response to AIDS, Mr. Moore's operates on many levels, political, metaphorical and personal. This Is true, in varied ways, of all the work here, most of which operates beyond the polemical content and essentializing ideas of Illness, sexual- ity and social activism prevalent (though by no means universal) a decade ago.
But it is important to remember that history; much still proceeds from it. The psychic experience of AIDS has long since infiltrated the bloodstream of American culture. In all kinds of indirect ways it filters into new work, and it will continue to be an active component, both as stimulant and depressant, in a contemporary art world that has recently found global extensions.
Art itself, piece by piece, does not effect change. Art just is what it is: a Babel of visual data and disparate things trailing price tags and promises, dogmas and ego, taking up space and gathering dust.
But the spirit of resistance generated by art as a creative phenomenon, however overt or subtle, is a secret weapon of immense and long-acting power.
Thinking Globally, Artists on AIDS
By WILLIAM ZIMMER
New York Times
EVER since there has been an AIDS epidemic there has been art about it. At first artists were trying to make sense of the mysterious virus, and to build a sense of community and shared grief.
Many years on, art about AIDS has a different character. Much of it is personal commentary on individual struggles made by artists who are H.I.V. positive or have AIDS. Some of it is rueful or sardonic commentary about the global nature of the phenomenon and the political and other, often unforeseen, consequences of the disease. Art dealing with a little under- stood epidemic is also novel or strange on purely formal grounds.
These ruminations are prompted by the exhibition now in the capacious galleries at Real Art Ways in Hartford.
"Bodies of Resistance" features 16 artists , some of whom are H.I.V. positive or have AIDS. All were asked by the curator, Barbara Hunt, to make pieces dealing with the illness especially for the exhibition. In July the show will travel to Durban, South Africa, to coincide with the 13th International AIDS Conference there.
A reminder that AIDS is no longer just watching people one knows, or knows about, being cut down but rather an international conundrum is furnished by Oladele Ajiboye Bamgboye who has set up a chat room on a Web site that specializes in video conferencing. The potential worldwide audience changes the imagery, which is scrambled, streaky and luridly colored with occasional flashes of body parts.
International ramifications are the theme of Skowmon Hastanan's "Red Fever." Ms. Hastanan makes a visual analogy between the packed holds of historical slave ships and the seating arrangements of modem aircraft. The piece includes timetables of various airlines that travel to South Asia. Ms. Hastanan's message is that many flights cater to the international sex trade, and children are desirable because they are thought of as disease-free. Ms. Hassan sees this as a new form of slavery.
The particular problems of India, where AIDS is frequently contracted by long-distance truck drivers who patronize prostitutes, are embodied in a hauntingly beautiful but chaotic installation by Rina Banerjee called "The Nature of Illness " In India, spices, oils and body fluids are customarily called on to treat illnesses, and the rich colors of some of these elements are splashed across the wall and floor of a corner space in the gallery. What looks like a glass-enclosed reliquary for a deity lies on the floor as if havoc has been wreaked on it. Ms. Banerjee paints a picture of avoidance. People with AIDS in India avoid dealing with it, and the traditional folk cures are of little avail.
Another wave of color across a wall is Chuck Nanney's "Germs." It's a sprawling, amorphous pattern of 1,500 variously colored paper disks fixed by push pins. The pattern, perhaps unintentionally, takes roughly the form of a dinosaur. it is tempting to try to discern some logic, to find significance in occurrences of certain colors. There is none, as befits a disease that no one yet has a firm handle on. if Mr. Nanney's piece is a vision of dispersal, Kendell Geers's is the opposite. "Untitled (T.W. Virus)" is an enormous cube, wrapped in red and white tape indicating caution. A wall label refers to this as a "huge Third World Shipment."
Ken Chu's “Remnants of Desire" consists of three small carpets. They are referred to as "domestic rugs” and they would be found in the homes of three different economic classes. But all are covered with a layer of soil and on top of this are placed cracked plates that Mr. Chu found in New York's Chinatown. The plates are another reference to domesticity though it is home life shattered.Along with the sweeping political and cultural statements made by the artists are works more personal and poignant. Frank Moore is widely known as a realist painter in oils with an excellent command of his medium His own experiences with AIDS have been a major subject, and because he paints so well, his content is all the more strong. The image on his rather small horizontal painting "Release" is an extended arm that takes on the weight and meaning of the earth itself. On the arm all sorts of natural, cyclical activity is occurring, and the individual body in the course of an illness mimics these changes.
Charles LeDray's "Patrick” is attention grabbing because it is a small piece occupying a whole wall of its own. A miniature jacket handmade by the artist, then shredded at the bottom, hangs on an appropriately small hanger. Like workers' uniforms in the larger world it bears a chest patch with the name 'Patrick" on it. Wall information tells viewers to think of Patrick as an "everyman." and to ponder his ragged life.
Opposite in scale from Mr. LeDray's contribution is Ernesto Pujol's "Gulliver's Dream." This diptych consisting of two large ink-jet prints features pairs of enormous feet bound at the ankles, the predicament of Swift's hero. Mr. Pujol's is an effectively terse metaphor of the torment of a disease that operates on the molecular level.
The show called "Bodies of Resistance" is at Real Art Ways in Hartford through Jan 30.
Art As A Life Force In The Age Of AIDS
Deborah Hornblow
Hartford Courant - November 28, 1999
When New York curator Barbara Hunt conceived the idea for "Bodies of Resistance," a multimedia exhibition of works by artists whose lives have been affected or infected by HIV/AIDS, she met with sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant resistance.
"There's a real problem with AIDS. People say, "Oh, no, we're not interested in doing something about AIDS." There is a great deal of prejudice and stereotyping that continues, and today there is the feeling like it's over," she says.
"Bodies of Resistance," which has its world premiere Wednesday at Hartford's Real Art Ways, makes two things clear. The AIDS pandemic is not over, and its impact on a generation of artists is profound, powerful and enduring.
The exhibition was ultimately organized by Visual AIDS of New York, where Hunt is executive director, in collaboration with RAW.
"There have been many AIDS shows," says Barry Rosenberg, director of visual arts at Real Art Ways. "I wasn't interested in doing just another AIDS show. I was drawn to this project by the quality and the international scope of the work. These are artists first, artists who have significant careers."
Among the 17 whose work is represented in "Bodies of Resistance" are Frank Moore, Charles LeDray and Nancy Spero. Their names lead a roster of artists from 10 countries whose work is united by the common thread of HIV/AIDS.
The idea for the exhibition came to Hunt in the summer of '98. She was in her second year at Visual AIDS, the New York nonprofit organization that previously produced the red ribbon campaign and the annual Day With(out) Art (which, not coincidentally, is Wednesday ), when museums, galleries and arts groups draw attention to the AIDS crisis.
"I got tired of hearing museums doing millennium shows," Hunt says. "I'm engaged with people who will be glad they can see the millennium. Steed Taylor [whose entry in the show is the literal middle-of-the-road artwork "Birthday Knot"] never thought he'd see 40. There's all this millennium hoopla, but a lot of the millennium will be affected by the unchecked spread of AIDS."
Rosenberg's decision to support the show and bring it to Hartford hinged on the promise of the show's wider impact. "Bodies of Resistance" will travel to Durban, South Africa, in July for the XIII World AIDS Conference.
"I remember so clearly the last world AIDS conference," Rosenberg says. "It was at a time when all these new drugs had come out. There was this feeling that the war was over, but there was a lot of anger from the AIDS community, and people were saying, "It's not over." A lot of friends, a lot of artists I know, were dying."
But if "Bodies of Resistance" finds its common theme in a virus that brings disease and death, the exhibition itself resonates with the force of life and, in some cases, astonishes with its beauty.
In Moore's "Release," a human arm is outstretched, reaching across a horizontal expanse of pale sky-blue canvas. Dandelions and tufts of grass grow from the arm, rooted in and nourished by glistening pools of blood. The arm is decaying, going back to the earth, but as it dies, it spawns new life, grass, weeds, mushrooms and a colorful riot of butterflies.
Distinctive Signature
The painting is peaceful, pastoral and remarkable. Moore is living and working with AIDS, a circumstance he reinforces with his "signature" in the lower right corner of the canvas. In lieu of the customary artist's name, Moore has signed his work with a bar code, the one he copied from his medical insurance forms; the one that has partly subsumed his identity as Frank Moore.
Charles LeDray has contributed "Patrick," a miniature of a working man's uniform - jacket, pants and blue shirt - that hangs from a tiny metal hook. The name of the uniform's owner, Patrick, is sewn on one side of the jacket, but just below the chest, the uniform dissolves into shreds and disappears.
A member of LeDray's family was stricken by AIDS.
In Barton Lidice Benes' "Reliquarium 1999," a compartmentalized wooden box holds a collection of AIDS-related memorabilia: drug vials, worry beads, ashes on a red ribbon, a broken vase from Liberace's porch and a piece of the chair where Rock Hudson used to sit and watch pornography.
Benes has AIDS, and he includes some of his own mementos in his reliquarium."Bodies of Resistance" also contains works that are harder to look at. Three giant photo works by the collaborative team Aziz + Cucher resemble photos of statuary or architectural objects when seen from a distance. But up close, they are biomorphic creations covered in a latex material designed to resemble human skin. The shadows and shadings on them are derived from human hair and the patterns on diseased skin.
Skowmon Hastanan's "Red Fever" deals directly with the ongoing spread of HIV/AIDS in Asia. She begins with the layout of a slave ship, but the rows of bodies in cramped quarters are occupied by Thai women in pink traditional dress. Alongside the schematic diagram hang airline travel schedules, mapping the travel routes of airplanes ferrying business travelers and adventurers to and from centers of the Thai sex trade, transporting and spreading the deadly virus as they go. Hastanan, who lives in New York, is affiliated with a group that educates Thai prostitutes about AIDS prevention.
Several of the "Bodies" works aptly illustrate the complicated cultural differences relating to the disease and the body.
Indian artist Rina Banerjeeis has created a corner installation in which the spice turmeric imparts a golden glow and faint aroma to ruined objects. "The piece directly references the spread of HIV/AIDS in India among the lower classes and Hindu rituals of spiritual and bodily cleansing," says Hunt.
Self-Inflicted Disease
In India, where disease is traditionally understood to be borne by air, water or insects, AIDS is sometimes thought "to be self-inflicted," Hunt says.
In Ken Chu's poetically and hauntingly titled "Remnants of Desire," mounds of earth rest atop Oriental carpeting. All around the dirt are shards of broken plates that have been smashed and partially buried in the dirt.
"It represents the hidden side of HIV and the growth and spread of the disease in Asia and America and the ways it is being ignored," Hunt says.
One of the unscripted, urgent messages in "Bodies of Resistance" is that no one can afford the luxury of ignoring HIV/AIDS. Hunt, who is vastly knowledgeable about AIDS statistics, sites current figures about the spread of the disease. In parts of Africa, one in four individuals are HIV-positive. In some villages, men with AIDS believe the "cure" is having sex with a virgin.
The current cost of medications for an HIV-positive patient in the United States is $15,000 a year "and that's with insurance," Hunt says. She worries that kids are getting less sex education in schools now that what they got a few years ago "when there was more fear."
A Higher Plane
But these are the "didactic elements" of the struggle, Hunt says, and she is anxious that the exhibition achieve a higher plane.
"A lot of AIDS exhibitions hit you over the head with a message that says, `You have to do this.' I'm more struck by the complexity of the work being produced here and by the beauty of some it. It's quite paradoxical, the beauty of work being produced about something so horrible."
And the beauty serves its purpose.
"The more beautiful the work is, the more it gets people to think about the more didactic elements. It's enough to feel the connection. People will talk about the art work and start talking about AIDS," Hunt says.
Hunt remains surprised at the number of galleries that had no interest in "Bodies," and by the instances in which galleries prohibited artists from contributing work to the show. She is gratified by the support from Real Art Ways, adding, "Hartford is lucky to have this place."
For Rosenberg, the exhibition is "a chance for Real Art Ways to show that art is about life and it connects," he says. "If you want to see great art all the time, go to the Wadsworth [Atheneum]. If you want to see what's happening now, how artists are interpreting the times they live in, that's what we do here. The artists we're showing live now, so they're affected by now."