MOCA is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2021 by presenting ENDURING CARE, a video program highlighting strategies of community care within the ongoing HIV epidemic. The program features newly commissioned work by Katherine Cheairs, Cristóbal Guerra, Danny Kilbride, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad and Uriah Bussey, Beto Pérez, Steed Taylor, and J Triangular and the Women’s Video Support Project.
From histories of harm reduction and prison activism to the long-term effects of HIV medication, ENDURING CARE centers stories of collective care, mutual aid, and solidarity while pointing to the negligence of governments and non-profits. The program’s title suggests a dual meaning, honoring the perseverance and commitment of care workers yet also addressing the potential for harm from medications and healthcare providers. ENDURING CARE disrupts the assumption that an epidemic can be solved with pharmaceuticals alone, recasting community work as a lasting form of medicine.
At 4pm on Saturday, MOCA and Visual AIDS will host an online conversation with commissioned artists Danny Kilbride, Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad & Uriah Bussey, and J Triangular, moderated by filmmaker Marguerite Van Cook.
The seven short videos will be available to view online beginning December 1, and will screen on loop in MOCA's Ahmanson Auditorium at Grand Avenue on Saturday, December 4. The program will also be available online via MOCA Screen from Monday December 6.
Visual AIDS is a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.
About the Artists:
Danny Kilbride is a community filmmaker based in Liverpool UK. He is the founding Director at Thinking Film, a not-for-profit organization that exists to provide marginalized communities with a voice and tell stories that challenge the way people see the world.
J Triangular is an independent curator, experimental filmmaker, and multimedia poet. Colombia-born, Taiwan-based. Graduated in film studies and screenwriting at TAI University School of Arts, Madrid, Spain. She received her master's degree in experimental documentary at the Cinema and Audiovisual School of Catalonia, Spain. Her work consistently addresses themes such as community identity, self-empowerment, care practices, and promoting communication and solidarity. In 2019, J was the international curator in residence at Visual AIDS with her project The Whole World is Watching which has been exhibited internationally in Taipei, Tokyo, Kyoto, Tlaxcala, Mexico City, Lima, and Colombia.
Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad is a Philadelphia-born writer, organizer, and co-founder of the Black and Brown Workers Co-op. In their work, they often trouble ideas of medical surveillance, bodily autonomy, and Blackness.
Uriah Bussey is a non-binary archival visual artist and educator from Cobbs Creek, Philly. Their practice spans printmaking, performance, and video and offers a dialogue with their personal archive, death, living spaces, and memory. What they hope to translate is that Black home spaces become a portal. It's a language between us, only. As well as how technology and print plays a function in keeping, sharing, and removing. There are many answers in the "archive", Bussey is trying to figure out what are the right questions to ask. Bussey received their BFA from Kutztown University and is a current artist in residence at 40th Street AIR Program in Philadelphia.
Marguerite Van Cook came to New York with her punk band The Innocents, after touring the UK with The Clash. She stayed and opened the gallery Ground Zero with her partner James Romberger. Her own work as an artist and filmmaker have placed her in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum and the Schwartz Art Collection at Harvard. Her other credits include poet (she was awarded the Van Rensselear Prize while at Columbia), writer, critic, comic book artist, actor and performance artist. Her collaborative project “Seven Miles a Second,” with James Romberger and David Wojnarowicz, is a graphic memoir of the life and death of Wojnarowicz is a New York Times Best Seller. Van Cook appears in Steed Taylor’s video I Am… a Long-Term AIDS Survivor as part of ENDURING CARE and was featured in J Triangular’s web series THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING in 2019.
