It’s shocking and beautiful, defiant and poetic, tragic, yet graceful. The mixed media traveling exhibit at the Fowler Museum in UCLA features artists from around the world fighting for the same cause. Appropriately titled, MAKE ART/STOP AIDS will be on display from February 23rd through June 15th.

Conversations and museum visits about AIDS are often uncomfortable, but MAKE ART/STOP AIDS is an exhibit that enables its audience to connect with this disease on many levels. When I walked in, I was expecting the factual visuals that we normally see and hear. Instead I was embraced by the grace and the strength of the people that participated as subjects and artists. This isn’t an imagined work of art constructed by the artist, but a shocking truthful exhibit. The artists are taking risks and speaking in volumes through numerous innovative methods.

The chanting of an innocent young girl in her native tongue greets you as you enter. I don’t understand what she says, but strangely it almost seems like her optimistic cries for forgiveness and help. Over and over, voices of men and women courageously say “I’m not pissed off at anything, but it obviously still affects my life”. From a distance, a stunning installation glows. Three hundred pill bottles are suspended from wires in the shape of a human being. Syringes with red tips, reminiscent of blood, form almond shaped halos along the entire body. These pill bottles were used to sustain the lives of the artists, Daniel Goldstein and John Kapellas, their friends and lovers. Gracefully floating, this piece above all speaks the loudest. As I slowly make my way around it, it leaves me silent, still and sad. Each bottle is real; it once belonged to someone and contained vital medications to help them live. It really doesn’t get more genuine than this. According to ancient traditions, holy people were depicted in this manner as well, adding a strange spiritual, yet meaningful twist to this piece.

A stunning fuschia dress stands alone made from hundreds of factory-rejected condoms. It’s both classy and elegant as artist Adriana Bertini tries to show that “seeing condoms transformed into a woman’s dress makes you rethink what it means to dress up and wear protection.” There’s also a distorted playfulness with how factory-rejected condoms can be altered into something that is no longer discarded, but now acceptable.

The collective actions of these artists challenge us to act and rethink our current attitude and values. Their work exposes us to the ethical crisis in an unconventional manner. Some are straightforward and others a bit obscure in passing along their message about social taboos and our role in eliminating this complex public epidemic that rises from our differences, desires, and violence. The societal change is what they are aiming to achieve as we watch the suffering of millions due to inadequate treatment. An astounding thirty three million people around the world are infected with HIV and it is startling to see how profit over lives seems to matter more to some governments and agencies. MAKE ART/STOP AIDS is a free exhibit and for more information, please visit the Fowler Museum located in the North Campus of UCLA.

www.fowler.ucla.edu

By: Tenny Hovsepians