Art about AIDS
What can we learn about the AIDS crisis from art?
Cover photo: aids is good business for some, neon, by Elmgreen and Dragset (2011). Photo by Fred Dott and via Koenig Galerie.
CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses sex and death.
World AIDS Day
December 1st marks World AIDS Day, commemorating those who have died from HIV/AIDS and the ongoing global struggle. Since the start of the epidemic in the early 1980s, an estimated 44.1 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses worldwide. Thanks to advances in antiretrovial therapy, HIV is now a manageable condition, although access to care is not guaranteed.
Art about AIDS
Art has played a significant role in responding to the crisis and remembering its impact. What began as local anguish has transformed into an international dialogue. Let’s take a look at the ongoing legacy of AIDS in art.
AIDS and Abstraction
American Ross Bleckner is credited as one of the first artists to create work about HIV/AIDS. He explains, “In the 1990s, when I did these paintings of cells and diseases, cancer, HIV, I was looking at them in petri dishes and stuff like that, and I realised that we are all one thin membrane away from disaster.”
Similarly, controversial photographer Andres Serrano placed bovine blood and his own semen under the camera lens, fusing their “productive and destructive power”. His work was later featured on the cover of Metallica’s albums Load and Reload.
Abstraction allowed artists to give form to the disease while keeping an emotional distance. Living through the pandemic in his twenties, Mark Bradford didn’t tackle the topic until later. “I’m not good at describing the real,” he says.
AIDS and the Queer Community
The first victims of HIV/AIDS were queer men, because the virus transmits easily through anal sex. It was initially called GRID (Gay-Related ImmunoDeficiency) by the media. The disease devasted the queer community.
Photographer David LaChappelle came of age during the pandemic. He explains, “Everyone thinks the Eighties were so cool, but there was a big dark cloud hanging over that period. It was really like a war.”
LaChapelle lost his boyfriend, dancer Louis Albert, to AIDS. “I never got tested, and for 15 years I just assumed I was going to die,” LaChapelle recalls. He briefly worked for ACT UP, promoting condom use and safe-sex.
LaChapelle photographed his dying friends posed as angels. He argues, “I think the ancients had it correct with that winged figure. I don’t think we’ve come up with a better depiction of what a soul might look like.”
HIV/AIDS took the lives of many pioneering queer artists, including Mark Morrisroe. He appears in the vulnerable Self-portrait at home with Diane Arbus, shortly before contracting HIV in 1986 and passing away at the age of thirty.
AIDS and Politics
Because HIV/AIDS was first associated with gay men, it was instantly politicized. The disease was ignored by U.S. President Ronald Reagan for years and labeled by some conservatives as a righteous plague against deviance.
AIDS activists carried Donald Moffett’s 1987 poster in marches. Moffett explicitly casts Reagan as a villain, placing him next to a target and declaring him a killer. The Reagan Administration’s negligence contributed to the death of over 90,000 Americans.
Jewish artist Avram Finkelstein redesigned the iconic pink triangle for gay-rights groups such as ACT UP. The symbol was first used to identify gay men — both Jewish and non-Jewish — during the Holocaust, who were subjected to sterilization, castration, and imprisonment.
Comprised of artists AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal, the Canadian art collective General Idea appropriated Robert Indiana’s LOVE for AIDS (Wallpaper) in hopes of bringing worldwide attention to the crisis.
AIDS and Sex
HIV/AIDS is transmitted through bodily fluids, prompting a rise in safe-sex awareness. Artists and activists sought to educate the public through their work, encouraging the use of condoms as a vital preventative measure.
Keith Haring was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988, and his work increasingly focused on sex. He depicted the disease as “devil sperm”, a commentary on the public’s negative view of sex and the queer community.
Japanese-American Masami Teraoka began making art about AIDS after a friend’s baby contracted the disease via blood transfusion. In Tale of 1000 Condoms/Geisha and Skeleton, he depicts a geisha anxiously preparing condoms to ward against a skeleton.
AIDS and Love
The high mortality rate of HIV/AIDS meant that it was understood to be a death sentence. Art historian Jonathan Katz recalls fears it would “lead to an early, pathetic, lonely death.” Yet the disease inspired many beautiful depictions of love.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres made many works dedicated to his lost love Ross Laycock. In Untitled (Perfect Lovers), he depicted their partnership with two identical clocks. Despite their similarities, one will eventually fall out of sync with the other. “Time is something that scares me,” he admitted.
Text-based artist John Giorno encouraged viewers to “TREAT A COMPLETE STRANGER AS A LOVER” and to practice “BOUNDLESS COMPASSION”.
Mexican-American artist Tino Rodriguez infuses his Catholic upbringing and Mexican heritage into his work. He incorporates the magical realism of Día de los Muertos into his work Eternal Lovers. With kissing skeletons, Rodriguez eliminates concepts of gender and sexuality to create a universal image of love in defiance of “simplistic dualities”.
AIDS and Death
Despite passionate activism, love, and support, millions of people lost their lives to HIV/AIDS. Artist David Wojnarowicz photographed his partner Peter Hujar on his deathbed in 1988. The images are heartbreaking. In his memoir Close to the Knives (1991), he wrote, “Hell is a place on Earth. Heaven is a place in your head.”
Ultimately, HIV/AIDS came to affect all kinds of people, with a particularly devastating impact in Africa. Photographer David Goldblatt spent his career documenting life in South Africa, including Victoria Cobokana and her two children. All three lost their lives to the disease.
AIDS and Memorials
After death comes memorial. How do we remember those lost in such a tragic, premature way? How can we process such devastation?
“I’m one of the people who witnessed a massive die off and I’m never going to get over it,” laments Robert Sherer. In Sweet William, he uses his own blood to process the trauma. The work was inspired by Sherer’s visit to his grandmother in Alabama during the late 1980s. “While I was there, she asked me to go outside and cut a bouquet of the Sweet Williams, and I felt like the grim reaper at the time because several of my friends were dying of AIDS in Atlanta, who had names like Bill, Billy and William,” he recalls.
In 1985, gay-rights activist Cleve Jones conceived of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to memorialize those who lost their lives to the disease. Each panel was designed for one person who died of AIDS. It has become the “largest community art project in the world” and has raised millions of dollars for AIDS service organizations.
AIDS and Healthcare
Thanks to daily medication, people with HIV/AIDS can enjoy healthy, normal lives. Nevertheless, it can be a trying and costly experience. Several artists have investigated this new reality.
The Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset tackle for-profit healthcare with their neon sign aids is good business for some. While the upper portion of the work – “AIDS IS GOOD” – is permanently lit, the lower portion – “BUSINESS FOR SOME” flickers in and out of view. Elmgreen explains, “the artwork raises the problem of privatizating our health industries.”
In his work Still-Life with Forget-Me-Nots and One Week’s Dose of Truvada, Terrill depicts medicine as a common consumer product. He says, “I really am bothered by the way the pharmaceutical industry controls the conversation on healthcare in this country.”
For 17 Years’ Supply, photographer Wolfgang Tillmans captures his own collection of empty pill bottles, documenting the volume of drugs necessary to keep him alive.
AIDS and Hope
Most importantly, artists have created images of hope, inspiring support, bravery, and tenacity. From Mali, textile artist Abdoulaye Konaté’s Fight Against HIV inspires community action and resilience. From 1995 to 2000, the installation included blankets and condoms for visitors to take.
Kia Labeija (Kia Michelle Benbow) was born with HIV, contracting the disease from her mother. In her self-portrait Eleven, she renders a typical doctor’s visit with glamour. About HIV/AIDS, she proclaims, “Transforming it into art is one way to shake myself free, to show that painful things can also be beautiful.”
Most recently, Indigenous trans artist Auá Mendes designed the key visual for AIDS 2026, the annual international AIDS conference taking place in Brazil next year. The illustration features local animals, Indigenous patterns, and medicinal plants, a reminder that healing is a “communal, cultural and ancestral” process.
