MAD is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2023 by presenting Everyone I Know Is Sick, a program of five videos generating connections between HIV and other forms of illness and disability. MAD will be screening Everyone I Know Is Sick, from 3 pm to closing.

The program features newly commissioned work by Dorothy Cheung (Hong Kong), Hiura Fernandes & Lili Nascimento (Brazil), Beau Gomez (Canada/Philippines), Dolissa Medina & Ananias P. Soria (USA), and Kurt Weston (USA).

Inspired by a statement from Cyrée Jarelle Johnson in the book Black Futures, Everyone I Know Is Sick examines how our society excludes disabled and sick people by upholding a false dichotomy of health and sickness. Inviting us to understand disability as a common experience rather than an exception to the norm, the program highlights a range of experiences spanning HIV, COVID-19, mental health, and aging. The commissioned artists foreground the knowledge and expertise of disabled and sick people in a world still grappling with multiple ongoing pandemics.

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 FILMS

Dolissa Medina and Ananias P. Soria, Viejito/Enfermito/Grito (Old Man/Sick Man/Shout)

Ananias, a San Francisco Bay Area artist and immigrant, performs the folkloric Danza de los Viejitos (the Dance of the Old Men). Originally from Michoacán, Mexico, where the dance originates, Ananias interprets its movements through the lens of his spirituality, his long-term HIV-related disabilities, and his search for a place in the world.

Dorothy Cheung, Heart Murmurs
Heart Murmurs is a poetic dialogue between the filmmaker and Dean, a young man living in Hong Kong. In reflecting on his experience living with a congenital disability and HIV during the first years of the COVID pandemic, Dean expresses his sense of self in the face of regular medical challenges.

Beau Gomez, This Bed I Made
This Bed I Made presents the bed as a place of solace and agency beyond just a site of illness or isolation. Through the shared stories of two Filipino men living with HIV, the video explores modes of care, restoration, and abundance in the midst of pandemic pervasion.

Kurt Weston, Losing the Light
Losing the Light reflects the artist’s bitter battle to stay in this world as a long-term survivor of AIDS who has lost his vision to CMV retinitis. An experimental self-portrait, the video evokes the dissolution and fragmentation of the artist's body, representing the impact of blindness, long-term HIV infection, and the cumulative effects of decades of antiretroviral medication.

Lili Nascimento and Hiura Fernandes, Aquela criança com AID$ (That Child with AID$)
That Child with AID$ tells the story of Brazilian advocate and artist Lili Nascimento, who was born with HIV in 1990. Lili has worked to expand narratives about living with HIV beyond the limited images and ideologies that permeate the AIDS industry.