Article ID: CBB420023945

Bridging Divides: art and religion in the early AIDS pandemic (2023)

unapi

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, visual artists created a canon of work examining the illness experience of people living with AIDS. Largely forgotten today is a subset of this canon that simultaneously engaged AIDS narratives and religion, thereby dialoguing across political, cultural, and ideological divides. The artists who crafted these works created spaces of sanctioned discourse, drawing together sexual and religious histories in a manner reminiscent of the confessional as analyzed in Michel Foucault’s work. This article rediscovers an archive rich in interdisciplinary illness narratives, arguing that the unearthed art pieces articulate four themes that interrogate the relationship between people with AIDS and religious traditions. In addition to furthering our understanding of a forgotten expression of AIDS illness narratives, this analysis provides insight into art’s capacity to dialogue between communities in the setting of internal divisions. These lessons may aid us as we endeavor to understand the diversity, function, and applications of illness narratives in the setting of the politicized diseases of the 21st century, including COVID-19.

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Authors & Contributors
Bayer, Ronald
Boeckl, Christine M.
Buklijas, Tatjana
Cipriani, Giovanni
Engelmann, Lukas
Fancy, Nahyan A. G.
Journals
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Medical History
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Social History of Medicine
Nazariyat: İslam Felsefe ve Bilim Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi (Journal for the History of Islamic Philosophy and Sciences)
Publishers
Truman State University Press
University of North Carolina Press
Oxford University Press
Polistampa
University of Chicago Press
University of Minnesota Press
Concepts
Medicine and politics
AIDS (disease); HIV/AIDS
Medicine and society
Public health
Medicine and religion
Medicine and art
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
Medieval
Early modern
16th century
17th century
Places
United States
Europe
Italy
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Vienna (Austria)
Austro-hungary
Institutions
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)
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