Still Here: Art on HIV/AIDS

Featuring Works by Antonius-Tín Bui, Shan Kelley, John Paradiso, Lucas Rougeux, and panels from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

From October 29 – December 7, 2019, the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park, presented Still Here: Art on HIV/AIDS, an exhibition of contemporary artwork on HIV/AIDS in dialogue with panels from The NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt was last hosted in the STAMP Gallery 30 years ago. In the interceding years and despite many technological and medical advances, HIV/AIDS remains an epidemic that disproportionately impacts the dispossessed and marginalized: queer men, trans women, racial and ethnic minorities, intravenous drug users, and economically vulnerable sex workers. Political stagnation and apathy, failed policy, and insurmountable paywalls for preventative drugs remain major barriers to ending the epidemic. Much has changed since The Stamp Gallery last hosted The Quilt in the 1980s, but what political, social, and medical barriers to prevention and treatment remain?  On view October 29th through December 7th, this exhibition included programming on World Aids Day and Day With(out) Art, December 1st. The Stamp Gallery will also partner with Visual AIDS to present STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven newly commissioned videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow.