Carlos Motta

Virosis: Art and HIV in Colombia
Testimonies, Documents and Actions (1981–2023)
Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO)
March 16 - June 11, 2023

Virosis is the first museum exhibition in Colombia to present artworks created in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country.

The exhibition, whose title comes from the eponymous work by Miguel Ángel Rojas (Virosis, 1986), is presented jointly with Hilos de sangre: Historias y memorias del vih/sida en Colombia by Pablo Bedoya and Carlos Motta, and brings together artworks created by thirty intergenerational Colombian artists and collectives, along with contextualized testimonies and documents, spanning from the early 1980s to the present day, in order to examine the profound cultural history of the AIDS crisis and contemporary issues related to HIV in the country.

Virosis examines the relationship between artistic production and HIV/AIDS in Colombia, highlighting the voices of historically significant artists on the subject — such as Miguel Ángel Rojas, Fernando Arias, and Wilson Díaz — in dialogue with a younger generation, demonstrating how relevant the topic remains today. The exhibition also pays tribute to artists who died from AIDS-related complications, including Luis Caballero, Lorenzo Jaramillo, and Luis Fernando Zapata.

The exhibition brings together perspectives that illustrate the diversity of artistic responses to HIV/AIDS, with an explicit focus on works that address themes such as everyday life, sexuality, relationships shaped by contagion, isolation, the inevitable passage of time, mortality, the politics of the body, and the representation of the virus. It also engages with concepts such as rage and desire, care and healing, spirituality and protection, grief and memory, vulnerability and power, sex, politics, and activism.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a sociocultural and political phenomenon shaped by beliefs, behaviors, migration patterns, phobias, and gender inequalities. Art has contributed significantly to defining the epidemic and has reminded us that AIDS emerges within complex social worlds — worlds defined by difference, desire, inequality, and violence.

Since the introduction of antiretroviral therapy in the mid-1990s, AIDS has come to be regarded as a phenomenon of the past, with little relevance to the lives of our societies today. Yet globally, deaths due to AIDS-related complications still number close to one million per year.

Virosis reminds us that, while advances in science mean that people living with HIV no longer face the same level of mortal risk they once did, they continue to confront cruel and unjust stigma, isolation, and discrimination.

This exhibition does not seek to be a definitive statement on the state of contemporary art in Colombia in relation to AIDS. Rather, it serves as a proposal to unravel the complex and diverse narratives surrounding the disease, as well as a vehicle for raising awareness, inspiring activism, and using art to confront the stigma, discrimination, and isolation experienced by those living and cohabiting with it, both in this country and beyond.

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