Vasilios Papapitsios
Vasilios Papapitsios is an HIV-positive filmmaker and artist blending genres and blurring boundaries at the intersections of advocacy, education and entertainment.
If you are interested in Vasilios work, please visit the artist’s Website, Vimeo or find their Instagram @basil.ios. Please contact them through their email, vasiliospapapitsios@gmail.com.
About:
Their work has been features in national campaigns with OTV - Open Television, UCLA, and Duke University. Vasilios has been creating art ever since discovering a love for fantasy as a child. As a creative, they have had a life of curiosity – from building fantasies in the mud and sticks of North Carolina creeks, to higher education at UNC Chapel Hill where they constructed art out of that same tar heel blue clay – transgressing conventions by gathering pieces of earth to find magic in some of the most backwards of backwoods. Vasilios is here to tell stories and usher in the next era of filmmaking. They are here to bring awareness with integrity, to heal trauma with a light heart. Ultimately, Vasilios is here to change fear-based rhetoric in style, through empowerment and social equality.
TROLL MA SUTRA, found personal objects installation and photography, 2017.
VIHDA 101, Mylar balloons and digital, 2017
Vasilios was born in Charlotte, North Caroline but eventually migrated out of the American South for political and health reasons. They now reside in Los Angeles. Vasilios studied Visual and Cultural Anthropology at university and found meaning in studying experimental visual ethnography. They bent and twisted their higher education to fit their creative and intellectual desire, creating independent studies. However, higher education proved difficult, as Vasilios was thrust into the spotlight by an unfounded, and homophobic claim that they were the centre of an HIV epidemic. After this experience, Vasilios decided to use art to fight for change. They knew art would best illuminate the actions of fear-based rhetoric and transform them into forgiveness, acceptance and love.
Intimacy Issues, Embroidery on cotton jockstraps and underwear, 2014
For the artist, art is more than a profession or a past-time, it is inherently personal. In 2014, Vasilios was close to dying of AIDS. Doctors informed them they had less than three months to live. Vasilios credits art to saving their life, and now hopes their art can touch the hearts of other people. As such, art has been a personal form of healing for the artist. The continued experience of living with HIV informs Vasilios’ art. They started creating art mostly because they did not see a light-hearted approach to discussing HIV+ and AIDS stigma. Vasilios noticed the conversations around stigma were so entrenched in pain, trauma and ignorance. They wanted to illuminate it in a contemporary way, one that felt playful and accessible. Their first project was to embroider weathered jock straps and underwear that they had worn since contracting HIV. This series, called Intimacy Issues, fights stigma with humour. The garments are stitched with phrases like ‘Love AIDS’, ‘I’m Poz’ and ‘Poz4Pleasure’. The artist describes it as an ‘ice-breaker.’ It is a conversation starter. Conversation and disclosure is one of the most important aspects of fighting HIV stigma, preventing the spread of the virus, and gaining a healthy sense of self. In this way, the art is an inherently political work. The process of creating Intimacy Issues was healing for Vasilios. The works are not professionally embroidered, Vasilios did them by hand without any prior experience. Each stich was empowering, and the experience of transforming the underwear was transforming for the artist as well. The work was, in the artists words, ‘art therapy.’ They were a creative outlet born out of necessity. The act of creating empowering words on garments associated with stigma was a sort of magic, or as Vasilios calls it ‘a spell of transmutation.’ The process changed fear into love. Through art, Vasilios re-learned how to listen to one’s body, to be aware of the stigma projected upon it, and to realise the gift of simply being alive. Eventually, this Intimacy Issues led them to the underground art scenes of New York City and Los Angeles. Soon afterwards, Vasilios premiered Going Viral 101 at the MIX NYC Experimental Film Festival and began showing art at UCLA.
Vasilios’ personal journey as an HIV-positive individual, one who moreover survived serious AIDS, contextualises their practice. Vasilios aims to create a new space away from toxic concepts and ignorance, and to facilitate healthy change in the ‘viral’ world of media and networks we are all plugged into. Other sources of inspiration for the artist include the internet, the work of ACT UP, and the experience of finding radical vulnerability and softness.
No Evil, Still from Going Viral 101, 2018
Vasilios uses primarily soft sculpture, digital art and video. They will use any medium as it is the idea, rather than the material, that guides their practice. Most of their work has been digital art because of the flexibility it offers. Digital art allows Vasilios to tell any story; regardless of how narrative, experimental, or abstract they are. Put simply, digital art allows them to evoke any emotion or message. The messages in Vasilios’ art centre around transformation and magic. Their art is about shifting perspectives, about virality, about stigma and about the IRL / URL. Every piece aims to transform fear into love.
More recently, Vasilios has directed their creative energies towards film. They are currently developing a scripted series called Queerdos with filmmaker Mark Moliterni. Queerdos is a comedy-drama (a dramedy) that is full of absurdity and magical realism. Like their other work, here Vasilios again uses a playful attitude as a tool create a new, modern commentary on social issues. The film series seeks to bring greater authentic representation for sex workers, people living with HIV in the present-day, queer elders and trans/Non-binary individuals. Vasilios is also working on a web series, called SAVAGE, launching this May with co-creator Charlie Peppers. Vasilios has been co-writing, producing and editing this project throughout over the last year. SAVAGE is set in a surreal and afro-futuristic landscape, and follows a young, queer, black man (Nico Savage) as he navigates becoming HIV-Positive.
Images courtesy of the artist.
Press and Publications:
To read more about Vasilios’ work, please visit:
Selected Exhibitions:
2020:
Kara Agora: Net Works – Pitch for a Social Network Sphere, Vienna, Austria
More C***, Less Poz: Undetectable & Unfuckwithable, AIDS 2020
AN ARMY OF THE SICK CAN’T BE DEFEATED: REFLECTIONS ON CARE WORK IN PERPETUAL SICK TIMES, Visual AIDS
Threading Global Movements, Visual AIDS
Viral: A Contagious Kiss, A Transmittable Video, Visual AIDS
2019:
Through Positive Eyes, Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA (2019-2020)
2018:
MIX NYC 30th Queer Experimental Film Festival, Brooklyn, New York POS·I·TIV·I·TY, Art Share-LA, Los Angeles, California
LA Queer Bienniel III, NAVEL, Los Angeles, California
2017:
Viral Illumination 001, featuring Xena Ellison, Ben Cuevas, Leo Herrera, Domonique Echeverria, Saturn Rising, Nicholas Burton, Daniel Opdahl, John Moletress