A collaboration between Visual AIDS and MoMA, the Second Annual Visual AIDS Research Symposium celebrates the lives and legacies of artists documented in the Visual AIDS Archive, the largest collection of images and biographical information about HIV-positive artists. Visual AIDS is a nonprofit organization that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.
The event includes new research by filmmaker María José Maldonado, writer Ruby Sutton, and scholar Eduardo Carrera, three participants in the Visual AIDS Research Fellowship, highlighting underknown artists who have been lost to AIDS. Ricardo Montez, Associate Professor of Performance Studies at The New School, will moderate a conversation after the screening. Artist and activist Joey Terrill and scholar Robb Hernández offer a keynote conversation. Throughout the event, short clips from the Body as an Archive, Visual AIDS’ oral history project, will be screened.
The research symposium is planned in conjunction with the installation In the Shadow of the American Dream featuring artworks by Luis Frangella, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Agosto Machado, Marion Scemama, Martin Wong, and David Wojnarowicz.
A reception and an opportunity to view the gallery will follow the presentation.
Registration
Admission is free, and RSVP is required.
This program takes place in person at MoMA, with an option to join online via Zoom.
Register to join us in person at MoMA.
Register to join us online via Zoom.
Program
2:30 p.m.
Coffee and check-in
3:00
Welcome and introduction
3:15
Researching Artists Lost to AIDS
“Bianca ‘Exotica’ Maldonado: Iconic Transgender Starlet and My Fierce Aunt”
Presented by María José Maldonado, filmmaker
“The Firm and the Yielding: The Art and Life of Luis Frangella”
Presented by Ruby Sutton, writer
“Animality and Affectivity in the Archive of George Febres”
Presented by Eduardo Carrera, PhD candidate in art history, University of Pennsylvania
Conversation moderated by Ricardo Montez, scholar
5:00
Keynote conversation
Joey Terrill, artist
Robb Hernandez, scholar
6:30
Reception and open gallery for attendees
7:30
End
María José Maldonado is a Salvadorian-Ecuadorian artist born and raised in Queens, NY. Maldonado’s films celebrate the fabulous Latine queer and trans people in her life. Her docushort My Fierce Aunt Bianca screened at Inside Out’s 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival, New York Latino Film Festival, TRANSlations: Seattle Trans Film Festival, Philadelphia Latino Arts & Film Festival, OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival, and Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival. Maldonado participated in BRIC’s Documentary Intensive Film Lab 2022 and Toronto Queer Film Festival Film Lab 2020, was a Lambda Literary Speculative Fiction Fellow in 2022, played the lead in Anita Abbasi’s award-winning Canadian short Saturday Fuego Diablo (2022), was Sandra Cisneros’s Macondo Writers Workshop Fiction Fellow 2021, was a Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellow in 2020, and was a Barbara Deming Fund 2020 feminist fiction grantee and Queer|Art Mentorship Literature Fellow in 2019, mentored by Charles Rice-González. Maldonado in Queens with her baby Izalco, husband Alejandro, and cat Vinny.
Eduardo Carrera is a curator, art historian, and cultural manager who focuses on Latin American, Latinx, and queer art. He was awarded the ICI Fellowship in 2024, supported by the Marian Goodman Gallery Initiative in honor of the late Okwui Enwezor, and is part of the graduate program in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught the courses World Film History, The Artists in History: 1400–Now, and Architecture and History. Carrera holds master’s degrees in cultural management and history of art, and completed the Independent Study Program at MACBA, Barcelona. He was the coordinator and chief curator of the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Quito (2017–22), and has over 10 years of experience in museum management. His writing has been published by Phaidon, Artpress, L’internationale, and others. He has collaborated with institutions such as Visual Aids, the Penn Museum, Wrightwood 659, Matadero Madrid, and MoMA’s Cisneros Institute.
Since the 1970s, Los Angeles–based Chicano artist Joey Terrill has explored the intersection of Latino and gay male identities in his art. A native Angeleno, he studied at Immaculate Heart Collage and California State University, Los Angeles. Living with HIV for 44 years, his art career has parallelled his four decades as an AIDS activist. Last year he was featured in Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living at the Hammer Museum and Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines at the Brooklyn Museum, followed by the solo show Still Here at LA’s Marc Selwyn Gallery in January 2024. Currently his work is included in five shows in California: at the Oakland Museum of California Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in La Jolla; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), LA; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford.
Robb Hernández is a professor of English and director of fashion studies at Fordham University. He is a public advocate for queer and trans artists of color and serves these communities as a curator, oral historian, arts juror, lecturer, and scholarly advisor to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino. His current book project, Transplanetary: Speculative Arts of the Americas, examines Latinx artists’ responses to the modern space program by fielding different historical epochs, celestial happenings, and cosmologies of the ancient Americas. He is the author of Archiving an Epidemic: Art, AIDS, and the Queer Chicanx Avant-Garde (2019), which offers a queer-of-color retelling of the devastating effects of AIDS on Latinx artist communities in Southern California. His research has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Ruby Sutton is a writer originally from Minnesota. Her journalism appears in Compact, The Believer, and T, among other magazines. Her fiction appears in Agora, Hobart Pulp, and Serpent Journal. She is currently at work on a novel.
Accessibility
This theater is equipped with an induction loop that transmits directly to hearing aids with T-coils.
Live CART captioning will be available.
American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation is available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
The nearest all-gender restroom is located in the Cullman Mezzanine.
Wheelchair accessible seating is available on a first come first served basis.
For more information on accessibility at MoMA please visit moma.org/Visit/Accessibility.
The Adobe Foundation is proud to support equity, learning, and creativity at MoMA.
Access and Community Programs are supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Major funding is provided by Volkswagen of America, the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art Endowment for Educational Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.