Description
Lessons from Fragments (Legacies of HIV/AIDS in Queer American Art)The specter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic still haunts queer art and knowledge production in art history and museums today. This hauntology is well-explored in literature and art history, but less so in museology. Focusing specifically on art that explores HIV/AIDS through fragmentation, such as Félix González-Torres’ Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) (1991) and John Boskovich’s Electric Fan (Feel It Motherfuckers): Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate (1997), this presentation examines fragmentation as a mode of narration in museums. Additionally, it explores how the specter of HIV/AIDS art unifies queer generations through time as it also risks alienating cishetero-audiences.
Fragmentation is of particular importance in this line of research because so much art produced during the height of the epidemic and in the years immediately following were fragments left behind, whether by choice or by force, by those who died. But it is also relevant to how art museums communicate information about HIV/AIDS. There have been very few exhibitions in the United States which focus on HIV/AIDS. It is more common for it to be mentioned briefly on a wall label. Or, given as a small piece of information not necessarily connected to the other art around it. Museums must change how they write their narratives about HIV/AIDS in order to tell these stories.
Queer museology provides the basic frameworks for changing narratives and approaches to HIV/AIDS art. It also forces museums to ask how, if at all, are they reaching queer audiences? Can they reach queer audiences through larger, more-well rounded stories or must they continue to scrape together stories from fragments? What shifts can be made to turn these fragments into narratives? These are all questions that this presentation asks and seeks to answer.
| Period | Jun 2026 |
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| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Florence, ItalyShow on map |