BEING & BELONGING One-hour long program of short videos - on loop
CCS Bard is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2022 by presenting BEING & BELONGING, a program of seven new videos centering the emotional reality of living with HIV today.
The program features new work by Clifford Prince King, Jaewon Kim, Mikiki, Davina “Dee” Conner & Karin Hayes, Camila Arce, Jhoel Zempoalteca & La Jerry, and Camilo Acosta Huntertexas & Santiago Lemus.
A day of mourning and action that uses art to respond to the ongoing HIV and AIDS crisis, Day With(out) Art encourages museums, universities, museums, and art institutions to present related programming on or around December 1, World AIDS Day. AIDS is not over!
Visual AIDS is a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.
Description of the works included in BEING & BELONGING and artist biographies follow:
Santiago Lemus & Camilo Acosta Huntertexas, “Los Amarillos”
Synopsis: Through poetry and a cascade of surreal landscapes and abstracted bodies, Los Amarillos visualizes the side effects that some people living with HIV in Colombia face due to low-cost antiretroviral drugs. Among the many side effects of these drugs, jaundice (yellowing of the skin) is so common for HIV+ people in Colombia that it can act as a visible marker of HIV status, exposing people living with the virus to stigma and ostracization.
Bios: Santiago Lemus (he/him) uses organic matter, image, and sound to address the relationship between art, nature, and landscape. He is co-founder of Tomamos la Palabra. Camilo Acosta Huntertexas (he/him) is a visual artist with a focus on experimental video. He is a co-founder of the House of Tupamaras and a member of the performance collective Street Jizz.
Camila Arce, "Memoria Vertical"
Synopsis: Camila Arce has been living with HIV since she was born in 1994, part of the first generation of verticales – people born with HIV – with access to HIV treatment in Argentina. (Verticales comes from the term ‘vertical transmission’ which is when HIV is passed from mother to child.) Memoria Vertical centers around Arce’s poetry and activism, transmitting a range of raw emotions: resilience, rage, grief, connection, exhaustion, and persistence.
Bio: Camila Arce (she/her) is an artivista from Rosario, Argentina who has been living with HIV since she was born 27 years ago.
Davina “Dee” Conner & Karin Hayes, “Here We Are: Voices of Black Women Who Live With HIV”
Synopsis: Through a collage of voices, viewers are invited to listen as seven Black women speak about their diagnoses and the role that stigma plays in their lives, especially as it relates to medical mistrust and their experience as Black women mothers.
Bio: Davina “Dee” Conner (she/her) is an HIV educator, international speaker, and podcast host who has been living with HIV since 1997. Karin Hayes (she/her) is an award-winning documentary director and producer.
Jaewon Kim, "Nuance"
Synopsis: In Nuance, Jaewon Kim expresses the emotional landscape of a romantic relationship through an unfolding collection of 42 photographs.
Bio: Jaewon Kim (he/him) is currently based in Seoul, South Korea. He uses video, photography, and installation to discuss the lives of queer people and people living with HIV.
Mikiki, "Red Flags, A Love Letter"
Synopsis: Mikiki describes Red Flags as an attempt to create a more neutral depiction of sexualized injection drug use among gay men, also known as slamming within the chemsex or “party and play” scene. Normally framed through the narrow lens of abuse and immorality, injection drug use is rarely seen from the perspective of users themselves, and even less often do these narratives center on pleasure and belonging.
Bio: Mikiki (they/them) is a performance and video artist and queer community health activist of Acadian/Mi'kmaq and Irish descent from Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland, Canada.
Jhoel Zempoalteca & La Jerry, "LXS DXS Bichudas"
Synopsis: Structured through a series of traditional Mexican dances, LXS DXS Bichudas critiques the concept of mestizaje, a colonial ideology that emphasizes the illusion of racial unity – a nation of mestizos, or mixed-race people, descended from the mixing of Spanish and Indigenous people – to the point of obscuring the racial hierarchies that continue to oppress Black and Indigenous people in Mexico. Performing the dance in an HIV clinic with pill bottle maracas and white masks, the artists extend the mockery to criticize HIV stigma.
Bio: Jhoel Zempoalteca (he/him) is a visual artist and educator born in Tlaxcala, Mexico. La Jerry (they/them) is a non-binary folk dancer born and raised in Juchitan, Mexico.
Clifford Prince King, “Kiss of Life”
Synopsis: At the heart of Clifford Prince King’s Kiss of Life is a wish – a wish for relationships filled with care, reciprocity, and understanding. The film centers the stories of several queer Black men living with HIV who express their own hurdles with dating, disclosure, and self-love.
Bio: Clifford Prince King (he/him) is an artist living and working in New York and Los Angeles. King documents his intimate relationships in traditional, everyday settings that speak on his experience as a queer Black man.