As part of the international day of the fight against AIDS, the Museum is participating in the initiative Day Without Art, first started in 1989 by Visual AIDS, New York, with Alternate Endings, Radical Beginnings. A video programme curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett for Visual AIDS, which prioritises Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic, commissioning seven new and innovative short videos from artists Mykki Blanco, Cheryl Dunye & Ellen Spiro, Reina Gossett, Thomas Allen Harris, Kia Labeija, Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Brontez Purnell.

In spite of the impact of HIV/AIDS within Black communities, these stories and experiences are constantly excluded from larger artistic and historical narratives. In 2016, African Americans represented 44% of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States. Given this context, it is increasingly urgent to feature a myriad of stories that consider and represent the lives of those that fall within this statistic. Alternate Endings, Radical Beginnings seeks to highlight the voices of those marginalised within broader Black communities nationwide, including queer and trans peoples. This material will be presented at MACBA in relation to situations that are closer to home by Nancy Garín and Linda Valdés of the Equipo re collective, which for five years has been working on body politics in the neoliberal regime from the perspective of art and culture. Their work, currently focused on the Anarchivo sida (Anarchive AIDS) project, seeks to construct one of the many possible narratives that have been denied, made invisible, and yet are fundamental in the struggle against the institutional HIV/AIDS policies in Spain and some Latin American countries.

Visual AIDS is a contemporary art organisation based in New York that uses art to fight AIDS by fostering dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists and preserving their legacy.

Equipo re (Aimar Arriola, Nancy Garín and Linda Valdés) is a research and production platform that works at the crossroads between body politics and the archive. Since 2012 they have developed research initiatives and organised public activities at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Santiago, Chile; Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile; Purée Associació Cultural, Barcelona; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; UNIA arteypensamiento, Seville; Loop, Barcelona; Tabakalera, San Sebastian, and elsewhere.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the generous support of The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. Visual AIDS would also like to thank the artists for the time and resources they have contributed to this project.

Main sponsor of the activities:
Estrella Damm
Day Without Art

Programme

FRIDAY 1 DECEMBER 2017
Venue:
Meier Auditorium.

Free admission. Videos in English and presentation in Spanish

Public programmes
macba [at] macba [dot] cat
Tel: 93 481 33 68