The Art Institute of Chicago observed World AIDS Day by celebrating the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a conceptual artist and activist who died of complications from AIDS.
Gonzalez-Torres was a leader in the social activist arts movement of the 1990s, working with issues of identity and human rights. Many of his pieces are inspired by his experience as an HIV-positive gay man who lost his partner to AIDS.
The installation juxtaposes the complications of everyday life against the simplicity of ordinary materials, such as strings of lights, candy, paper stacks, beaded curtains and text-based portraiture. Gonzalez-Torres welcomed viewers to participate in his art—blurring public and private—by eating pieces of the candy, taking pieces of paper off the stacks and walking through the beaded curtains.
"Especially being HIV-positive, having lost a partner and being right in the middle of this time period where HIV is receiving such discrimination and unfair treatment, for him to be a publicly gay man about a very private thing, your sexuality … is what makes these blurred lines between public and private such a big deal to him," said Kate Kelley, special projects lecturer at AIC who lead a gallery talk on World AIDS Day about Gonzalez-Torres's work.
Through a partnership with Visual AIDS, an arts organization committed to HIV prevention, AIC also screened Untitled, a film by Gonzalez-Torres's protégé Jim Hodges and film artists Encke King and Carlos Marques de Cruz. The film, created specifically for World AIDS Day, is a 60-minute non-linear montage of archival and pop footage recalling the passionate activism sparked by the early years of the AIDS crisis.
The Gonzalez-Torres installation will be displayed until Jan. 15.
The Art Institute joined more than 55 major museums, arts organizations, community groups, and colleges throughout the U.S. in presenting simultaneous, free public screenings of Untitled Dec. 1.
See www.creativetime.org/daywithoutart and www.visualaids.org .
