‘Viroza’, the first museum exhibition about HIV

A “graveyard” of samples of that liquid on paper, 163 boxes of antiretroviral drugs and an imposing mask made of black leather embody the story of thirty Colombian artists gathered in “Viroza”, the first museum exhibition about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country.

Among the exhibited works, the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá (MAMBO) stands out. “Ulysses”a huge mask of black leather, latex and stainless steel with which plastic artist David Lozano presents “a dark body subjected to passions and desires, sometimes reprehensible to a prudent society”.

The “fear” inspired by this “dialectical” mask is broken when public access to the work and from the back, it enters the interior covered with a stuffed fabric that reminds us that reality has “two faces”.

This piece hung from the ceiling of the room is part of a series “Ulysses, the gaseous body”an installation that recreates the men’s sauna “Ulises” in Bogotá, a space that Lozano defines as a “place of memory” that flourished in the 1990s and is still active.

“Some of my friends who went to Ulises and other places died. Let’s say it’s a dedication to all those friends and non-friends who died and disappeared during the (HIV/AIDS) pandemic,” the artist told EFE.

sperm on blue ink

A hundred abstract ejaculations are superimposed on words “cemetery” with which the sheets of paper on which the sperm samples of those who participated in this work, in which Wilson Díaz contemplates sexual existence, highlighting the concept of death, are marked with blue ink.

Like the star he was named after exposure emphasizes the partial development of silver in gelatin Miguel Angel Rojas which responds to the “experienced panic” of the 1980s due to the “danger and violence associated with HIV infection”, an acronym that the artists chose to write in lowercase in order to “transform its symbolic weight”.

In it, a combination of drawings can be seen after which distinguish some sex scenes, small figures that radiate anxiety and even death itself.

Experimental videos are also present in this exhibition with artists like Camilo Acosta and Santiago Lemus, who in “Los Amarillos” reflects on the jaundice that some patients with this disease have, the result of side effects of antiretroviral drugs that turn their skin yellow.

As a continuation of this audiovisual work, Acosta and Lemus They acted this Thursday in the Mambo “Yellow Manifesto”, a performance in which they swallowed more than a dozen yellowed and wet papers with sentences like “HIV is not a disease, it’s a political symptom” written on them.

Except for HIV

The exhibition is presented together with a timeline in which a reference to some created works Colombian artists and collectives, as well as some testimonies and documents dating from the early 1980s to the present, to examine the “deep cultural history of the AIDS crisis”.

baptized as “Threads of Blood: Stories and Memories of HIV/AIDS in Colombia”, This timeline is part of the research of New York-based Colombian artist Carlos Motta and researcher Pablo Bedoya.

“We realized that it doesn’t really exist visible and publicly available source in Colombia which could be accessed if they wanted to know about HIV. Both Pablo and I thought this was a big mistake in the country’s historical memory,” Motta explained to EFE.

As part of this exhibition cycle available until June 11, Motta also floods the walls of MAMBO with “Stigmata”, an anthology exhibition that, in addition to talking about HIV in pieces such as “The Fall of the Damned”, also covers other aspects related to the experience democracy from the perspective of minority groups.