The Washington D.C.-based AIDS Institute engaged me as the artist-in-residence in 2004 to produce a series of paintings depicting people with AIDS from different countries around the world. I valued this opportunity to partner with the Institute in their efforts to

humanize people with AIDS/HIV. 

On one side of six circular canvases, I painted portraits in color of people living with AIDS/HIV: a woman and child from Uganda; a man from Tibet; a mother and infant from India;

a young girl from El Salvador; a male same-sex couple from the U.S.; a woman from China.

On the other side of each canvas I affixed a circle of rusted metal, into which I engraved the outline of each country with a plasma cutter. Around the edge of each circle I drove horse shoe nails, creating a spiky corona around each image reminiscent of a hugely magnified AIDS virus. These images were used in printed publications for the Institute, and the canvases themselves auctioned off to raise funds for their advocacy work.