Launch
The HIV Howler Issue 4: Movement-Migration
07.08.2019
5 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Launch and reception with editors
Anthea Black + Jessica Whitbread
Performances at 6 p.m.
with Mikiki (TO), Jordan Arseneault (MTL)
and Lisa Freedman (NYC)
Launching as part of the year-long program Loosely Assembled / Assemblages Souples, the fourth issue of The HIV Howler, Movement-Migration, features the works of artists, writers and activists living with HIV from Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Taiwan, Romania, Rwanda, Uganda, and the United States.
Join editors Anthea Black, Jessica Whitbread and invited guests on the evening of Wednesday, August 7th for their intervention into the ongoing programming, and a panel discussion on AIDS activism and art publishing led by the editors. The panel will be accompanied by a performance by guest artists Mikiki and Jordan Arseneault and a short reading by Lisa Freedman.
The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism is a limited edition art newspaper focusing on global HIV art and cultural production. It is a forum for dialogue, a demand for aesthetic self-determination, a response to tokenism, and a guide to navigating the vibrational ambiguities between policy, pathology, and community. Art and artists play a fundamental role in shaping broader societal understandings of HIV, often working from direct experience and within the communities most impacted by the virus. Together we centre the voices of HIV+ artists and reflect the immediacy and urgency of global HIV/AIDS dialogues as well as their historical continuities.
Credit: The HIV Howler
Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker based in San Francisco and Toronto. Her studio work addresses feminist and queer history, collaboration, materiality, and labour and has been exhibited in Canada, the US, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Norway. Black is co-editor of HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education with Shamina Chherawala and The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design with Nicole Burisch, and publisher of The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism with Jessica Whitbread. She is an Assistant Professor in Printmedia and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts.
Jessica Whitbread is a queer activist and artist based in Kyrgyzstan and Toronto. Her work includes LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN, No Pants No Problem, she is a co-curator of POSTERVirus with Alex McClelland, publisher of The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism with Anthea Black, and publisher of Tea Time: Mapping Informal Networks of Women Living with HIV in 2015. She was the Wesley Mancini Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Art and Innovation, a recipient of the Premier’s Award from the Government of Ontario, and the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award. In 2016, she birthed twins and advocated to openly breastfeed them in a Canadian context.
Together they are joined by an Editorial Advisory including Canadian-born Theodore Kerr, a Brooklyn based writer, artist, and founding member of What Would an HIV Doula Do? Jordan Arseneault is a Montréal performer, writer, and translator whose work addresses issues of queerness, HIV, and social injustice. Lisa Freedman is a New York writer and teacher at The International Women's Writing Guild and The New School. Charles Ryan Long, a Chicago-based multimedia artist who uses papermaking and print production to communicate narratives of remembrance and legacy to highlight opportunities for critical cultural shifts. Kairon Liu, Taipei-based artist-curator and photographer, whose practice reflects narratives of religion, disease, and universal values, including Humans as Hosts, a project focused on understanding the living situation of people with HIV and heightening awareness about AIDS. Mikiki, Notorious SlopQueen, performance and video artist and queer community health activist of Acadian/Mi’kmaq and Irish descent from Newfoundland, Canada, who now lives in Toronto. Mikiki is also performing that evening. Mikiki is an artist and queer activist based in Toronto. Darien Taylor, who has been living with HIV for 30-plus years and has been active in the Toronto HIV community, including as co-editor of the international anthology Positive Women: Voices of Women Living with AIDS. L'Orangelis Thomas, an Afro-Caribbean artist, HIV and sexual and reproductive rights activist, feminist, blogger, and wannabe Bruja, born and based in San Juan, Puerto Rico and active in global networks GNP+, ICW and Pangea.
The HIV Howler gratefully acknowledge the support of the Toronto Arts Council and SBC Gallery.
Archival documents and images are presented with partnership and support from The ArQuives, Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives.
SBC Gallery will like to thank the ACCM, COCQ-SIDA for the support of programming.
