The Aids Institute

REMARKS AT THE AIDS INSTITUTE AWARDS RECEPTION, Washington DC, November 16, 2006

First I would like to thank the Institute for giving me the opportunity to create this work. I am very honored to be here. This project has enabled me to take my portraiture in some new directions. Some of these are technical, such as my exploration in this work of sculptural and interactive dimensions for my paintings on canvas. The project has also functioned as a structure within which I could grow as an artist, in terms of creating images that depict love, compassion and courage at the same time that they refer to loss, despair and death on many levels. I feel that I have reached a new place in my own artmaking process by finding forms that express these profound and paradoxical aspects of our human experience.

My research for the project educated me about some of the facts of the AIDS epidemic around the world, and how I as a global citizen want to engage constructively with the ongoing crisis of AIDS. My engagement has begun with these paintings. I will say just a few words about the process of creating these works, and invite you to ask me questions now or later on. When I searched online for images associated with AIDS, I found photographs of people living with HIV and AIDS from around the world. Six of those photographs became the bases for this first group of portraits. I intend to continue adding to them. I also found many images of the virus itself, and these have permeated the portraits on various levels. While the virus takes many forms, all of them share a characteristic round shape with a series of projections radiating out from their edges. I decided that the textile patterns and lllvirus as being literally the wallpaper of their, and all of our, lives.

On another level within the work, each round canvas with its coronal projections is an individual virus. To represent the interdependency of all the world's people, I initially planned to physically connect the portraits to one another with wires or fabric that would give the effect of connective tissue. However, I decided later on that just being hung in proximity to each other was enough of a connection. Additionally, I like the effect created by suspending the paintings close to each other but without actually tying them together, because it creates a physical space in which viewers can move among the paintings and create their own connections. The movement of air created by viewers gently moves the portraits, revealing their different sides and the many different perspectives that are possible between the six double-sided panels.

The process of rusting the metal took on symbolic significance in terms of the action of the virus spreading corrosively throughout individual lives and communities and throughout our planet. To me, the painted side of each panel refers to a personal life story, and the metal side refers to the larger, macro-scopic levels on which AIDS affects all of us globally. I welcome any questions or comments on the work.