In partnership with Visual AIDS.

In order to foster a community conversation about HIV and AIDS in dialogue with the Library’s major archives on the history of the AIDS crisis, The New York Public Library is hosting a project in partnership with Visual AIDS to create site-specific installations in four library branches—across the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island—that explore the ways that HIV and AIDS are currently affecting these local New York City communities. Fifteen artists, writers, and advocates answered the call to participate in a series of Flash Collective workshops with Avram Finkelstein. Over the course of two months they met to discuss the current challenges faced by people living with HIV, as well as the challenges in HIV prevention. 

 

A major theme that emerged in their conversations was the ways that current advances in HIV treatment and prevention may relate to stigmatization, economics, and treatment agendas. Based on these conversations, they designed a poster installation for four library branches, an outreach post card, and a blog to continue their conversation under the name of the Undetectable Collective.

 

Their work will be on view this October through December at the Hunt’s Point, Jefferson Market, St. George, and Washington Heights branches.  See each branch’s homepage for location and hours. Please come see the exhibition and take a postcard.

 

Artists, writers, and activists that worked on the collective included:

 

Avram Finkelstein

Alex Fialho

Alina Oswald

Brendan Mahoney

Conrad Ventur

Filip Condeescu

Gerald Mocarsky

hucklefaery

Jano Cortijo

Jorge Sanchez

Kenneth Pietrobono

Lanai Daniels

Mark Blane

Nick Kleist

Pablo Herrera

Spear Minteh

 

Avram Finkelstein is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn. His work is in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Whitney, The Metropolitan Museum, The New Museum, The Smithsonian, The Brooklyn Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum and The New York Public Library. Finkelstein is a founding member of the collective responsible for Silence=Death and AIDSGATE, which was recently included in Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. He is also a founding member of the art collective, Gran Fury, with whom he collaborated on public art projects for international institutions including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Venice Biennale, ArtForum, MOCA LA, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Creative Time, and The Public Art Fund. He has created public awareness campaigns for AmFAR, The AIDS Policy Project, The Campaign To End AIDS, ACT UP, POZ, United Against AIDS, and ACRIA. He has conducted Flash Collectives at the HIV Is Not A Crime Conference, Concordia University, The New York Public Library, The Helix Queer Performance Network, and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU.