Art for Bloody Change
Last year scientists specialising in AIDs research revealed that their new stem cell transplant had successfully cured a fifth case of HIV. This announcement was particularly groundbreaking because the patient in question was 66 years old and had been living with HIV since 1988, making them both the oldest person with HIV and also the patient with the longest history of infection. This is a huge beacon of hope for communities globally that have been terrorised by the looming presence of this virus since the beginning of the AIDs crisis over 40 years ago. And while the medical care for the virus itself has improved drastically since then, another epidemic emerged in the wake of the AIDs crisis, which has yet to be dealt with: stigma.
Throughout the epidemic, copious amounts of stereotypes and misconceptions about the virus plagued the queer community and demonised those who were associated with it. The acceleration of the virus was congruent with the acceleration of fear-mongering toward queer people. This meant that gay individuals now not only had to cope with the grief and fear they were experiencing within their community, but they also had to learn to navigate in a new world in which they were seen as a plague to the rest of society. The role of fighting against these public perceptions fell solely upon gay activists and artists as governmental and systemic neglect allowed for the continued harassment, discrimination, and above all, complacency with the rising death tolls of gay men in America. The idea that death seemed an inevitable circumstance of the virus rather than a result of governmental neglect was most problematic as it created a narrative that this crisis was the fault of a set of deviant individuals. This allowed for the government’s involvement, or lack thereof, to be both minimal and homophobic, as the small amount of action taken against the virus seemed to come in the form of thinly-veiled, anti-gay propaganda and legislation.
Ultimately, the lack of response towards the virus and the casting of gay men as its scapegoat by the government unfairly redirected pressure to manage the health and safety of the broader public onto the LGBTQ+ community.
Avram Finkelstein, Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles Kreloff, Chris Li, SILENCE = DEATH Project, 1987. Offset lithograph, sheet: 33 9/16 × 21 15/16 in. (85.2 × 55.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Robert Thill in honour of Robin Renée Thill Beck, 1998.109. © artist or artist's estate .Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.
For those who watched Saturday Night Live’s January 21st 2023 show, one may remember the sketch in which its host, Aubrey Plaza, directs an HIV commercial. In it, Devon Walker’s character, ‘Jamal’, continuously and intentionally changes his lines to make it clear he is not gay. Throughout his humorous ad libs ‘Jamal’ points out several different stereotypes surrounding the human immunodeficiency virus, and the sketch overall takes a satirical jab at the ridiculously upbeat commercials for HIV that you may have seen advertised on television. Perhaps the most ironic part, however, is that these kinds of commercials and silly comedy sketches on late-night shows often do a better job of fighting misconceptions around HIV and AIDs than the actual systems governments put in place.
As discussed earlier, the rise of AIDs also saw the rise of fear-mongering, misinformation, and discrimination against communities that were most at risk of contracting and subsequently spreading the virus. Queer people are consistently used as a scapegoat for the AIDs crisis and, in turn, have had to spend the last four and a half decades fighting against stereotypes and their own condemnation while simultaneously attempting to heal as a community in the wake of the trauma caused, not just by the virus, but the widespread systemic reluctance to help them.
Felix Gonzales-Torres, "Untitled" (Blood), 1992. Installed in Dancing with Myself - Works from the Pinault Collection. Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy. 8 Apr. – 16 Dec. 2018. Cur. Martin Bethenod and Florian Ebner. [Traveling.] Photographer: Matteo De Fina. Image courtesy of Punta della Dogana.
The government’s failure to protect the LGBTQ+ community both from the virus and the myriad misinformation, which led to tremendous hostility and discrimination against them, infuriated artists and activists at this time. Taking matters into their own hands, artists such as Felix Gonzales-Torres, Andres Serrano, and Kiki Smith, to name but a few, began making works using blood, either as a medium or subject matter, to mediate conversations around HIV stigma and gay rights.
Like all of his oeuvre, Torres’ Untitled (Blood) series is simplistic but highly impactful. The work consists of a curtain made of red and white beads, which divides its exhibition space and will not allow you to access the rest of the space without the beads physically touching you as you pass through. The red and white beads, of course, reference blood cells, and the piece itself is a scathing indictment of the false narrative that interacting with someone with the virus meant one could contract it. This dangerous misconception led to the demonisation and social ousting of thousands of people living with HIV.
For example, in 1985, an Indiana teenager with haemophilia contracted the virus through a blood transfusion and was kicked out of school because the public feared that his presence would spread HIV to his classmates. I bring this up because it’s important to note that the school board allowed this, the health department allowed this, the judicial system in Indiana allowed this… the systems that governments put in place to protect events like this from happening were failing, and that’s why artworks like Untitled (Blood) were so radical. They were actively attempting to change public perception in the face of systemic discrimination.
Andres Serrano, Blood and Semen V, 1990. Image courtesy of Dazed Digital.
Kiki Smith, Blood Pool, 1992. Image Courtesy of Dazed Digital.
While these artworks have had a tremendous impact in both the wider art world and also within queer communities to help build a more accurate and empowering narrative around the AIDs crisis, the one thing they struggled to reframe is the law. In the United States, the FDA still denies men from being eligible to donate blood if they have had sexual relations with another man within the last three months. Previously, this was a lifetime ban up until 2015, when the government loosened regulations to allow gay men to donate blood if they’ve abstained from sex for at least a year. There are a few reasons why this rule seems nonsensical and specifically aimed at upholding the ignorant stereotypes attached to gay men since the 1980s.
The first is that all blood donated within the United States is screened for HIV before it is sent out. The Red Cross is even required to report to their donors if their blood tests positive for any number of infectious diseases that they screen for.
Secondly, HIV testing has become much more advanced and accessible than when these antiquated laws were drafted. Today you can take a rapid antigen test at home, which can detect the virus as soon as 18 days after exposure. Also, it seems foolish to specifically target men in this measure, considering a global poll from 2021 showed that 54% of all people living with HIV are women and girls. Lastly, there has been a massive global blood shortage since 2022, and donation centres have essentially been begging people to donate more frequently. America is one of the only countries with some form of ban on gay people donating blood, so the question here is: what can art do to combat this?
The Gay Blood Collection. Image courtesy of Stuart Stemple and Culture Hustle.
Artist, activist and infamous Anish Kapoor rival Stuart Stemple has offered his answer to this question. Stemple recently collaborated with the creative brand Mother to design a line of inks and paints. Each item from the line contains blood donated by gay male employees at Mother. The collection includes five different art tools, all appropriately only available in a deep red hue. The tools are also all referencing modes of protest from the past. Ranging from silk screen ink that students of the 1960s and 1970s would have used to create pamphlets and posters to a spray kit that protests of today may use to tag areas of congestion with their message, these tools have deep roots within the history of activism. Stemple hopes these tools will again lead to an intersection of art and activism tantamount to the gay rights movements of the 1980s and 1990s. He hopes that this relationship will specifically target the FDA’s homophobic and antiquated laws. The introduction for the line on Stemple’s website reads;
“In 1983, the FDA introduced a guideline that effectively banned men who have sex with men from donating blood. A form of this ban remains in place to this day, making the US one of the only countries to continue to ban the donation of gay men’s blood. We think that’s pretty fucked up. So we took the FDA’s unwanted blood and did something about it. [We] created a collection of inks and paints made from the blood of gay Mother employees. Any act of protest to #unbangayblood - from paintings and graffiti to letters to the FDA—can be amplified with the Gay Blood Collection.”
Stemple even provides a letter template to send to local organisations and government officials to call for an end to the gay blood ban. Effectively giving us all the tools we need to fight this outdated policy.
These self-proclaimed “supplies for protest” may be jarring to some people in the same way that Serrano, Torres, or Smith’s work was decades ago, which is why it seems like the inevitable next step for the art world's response to the treatment of the LGBTQ+ community. The shift from artists mediating conversations around HIV stigma through their work to artists putting the tools into the hands of the public so they can do it themselves feels like a necessary revamping of this specific conversation. The Gay Blood collection, while not a work of art, seems to be following in the footsteps of artwork from the 80s and 90s, which used blood not just to be shocking or edgy but in an attempt to reframe the narrative around gay people and the AIDs crisis.
In a day and age where contemporary works which deal with the AIDs crisis as a subject matter are no longer shocking and find themselves almost minimised under the umbrella of queer art, it is essential to pave new roads for these conversations to take place. The homophobia which arose through the AIDs crisis is still at large in the real world, and installations or paintings within the confines of gallery walls are no longer enough to effect change. A line of products which has the capability to allow protest and art to converge within the public sphere and spread awareness on a level that the institution of art cannot seems vital in this fight against homophobic policies.
Whereas artists of the last generation were fighting for societal acceptance through their work, contemporary artists like Stuart Stemple are fighting for systemic change by putting the discourse directly in our hands.
Footnotes:
[1] NBC News, "A Sth Person Is Likely Cured of HIV, and Another Is in Long-Term Remission," NBC News, n.d.,
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/5th-person-likely-cured-hiv-another-long-term-remission-rena40116.
[2] Saturday Night Live, *HIV Commercial," YouTube.com, 2023, https://www.google.com/urlsa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjim9ecv5f9AhWFZSAKHRIWDZEQwqsBegQIChAF&url=http§%34%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC7QssqVSQSO&usg=AOvVa w2thJcLbhXCMUZ4EuzrshU4.
[3] Dazed, "All the Times Artists Used Blood for Radical Work," Dazed, October 30,
2015, https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/27205/1/a-history-of-the-relationship-between-bdd\lood-and-art.
[4] CDC, "The AIDS Epidemic in the United States, 1981-Early 1990s | David J. Sencer CDC Museum | CDC," www.cdc.gov, April 29, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/museum/online/story-of-cdc/aids/index.html.
[5] Benjamin Mazer, "The FDA's New 'Don't Say Gay' Policy for Blood Donation," The Atlantic, February 2, 2023,
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/02/fda-blood-donation-policy-homophobic-restrictions/672922/.
[6] American Red Cross, "LGBTQ Donors," Redcrossblood.org, 2017, https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/how-to-donate/eligibility-requirements/l gbtq-donors.html.
[7] UNAIDS, "Global HIV & AIDS Statistics - 2020 Fact Sheet," UNAIDS, 2021, https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet.
[8] American Red Cross, "Red Cross Declares First-Ever Blood Crisis amid Omicron Surge," Redcross.org, 2022,
https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/2022/blood-donors-needed-now-as-omicronintensifies.html.
[9] "The Gay Blood Collection," Culture Hustle, n.d.,
https://culturehustle.com/pages/the-gay-blood-collection.
[10] "The Gay Blood Collection," Culture Hustle, n.d., https://culturehustle.com/pages/the-gay-blood-collection.
[11] Stuart Stemple and Mother, "Mother Template Letter Blood Donation FNL," docs.google.com, accessed February 15, 2023, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-IvTf5UyixPgKx6iwnIDt7T_eU4ZXxaej7ZpNZIWogla81w1zAN_Q VAuw9KrBGWzSK9M9jVGjdWclgqc/pub.
[12] Mother, "Blood Is Blood," Mother - New York City, accessed February 15, 2023, https://mothernewyork.com/work/blood-is-blood/.
Samatha Presco
Agents of Change Co-Editor, MADE IN BED