Widely considered merely a tragic tangent within US culture, AIDS has in fact been one of the most powerful shaping forces in American art since the 1980’s. Of course, we have repressed AIDS’ role in the making of our culture in keeping with our longstanding repression of AIDS in general. But repression, as we know from psychoanalysis, is the sign of great power. In this talk, Katz illustrates how AIDS has fundamentally shifted the American cultural landscape, exploring not only the manifold losses AIDS has inflicted, but also how, in response to both AIDS and the prejudice it engendered, a plague has rewritten both the form and content of American art.
Delivered by Jonathan Katz, co-curator of Art AIDS America, and Director of Visual Studies Doctoral Program at SUNY. Opening will be a spoken word performance by avery r young. Free and open to the public.