Project
The Void: hiv. performance. social body
The International Queer/Cuir IX
The Void: hiv. performance. social body
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
June 19-20, 2025
In the context of the exhibition Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance, the MACBA presents The Void: hiv. performance. social body, a poetic and performative gathering curated by Equipo re (Aimar Arriola, Nancy Garín and Linda Valdés) and Carlos Motta.
Artists and activists gather to discuss the current hiv/aids crisis, understanding hiv as a link that connects the different forms of violence and inequality afflicting society today. The programme seeks to temporarily fill this void through the experiences and aesthetic and discursive contributions of the invited participants.
As cultural agents we recognise that hiv/aids is a political crisis that continues to affect millions of people around the world. We respond to the renewed and perennial urgency that the recent budget cuts by the US government and other reactionary governments such as Argentina’s have brought to countries in the Global South. We see that white supremacy and hegemonic domination continue to open colonial cracks and produce inequities through necropolitics and extraction. We conceive of this programme as an attempt to collectively intervene in a constantly shifting present, drawing on the poetic and performative power of cultural agents, artists and activists called to participate.
We think of the wide Atrium of the MACBA as a void of representation around hiv/aids; and the postmodern architecture of the building as a metaphor for institutionalization and the discomforts from which the social body suffers today.
