Abstract
Location: Museum of Modern Art of Bogota in Bogota, Colombia.
Virosis is a thematic exhibition of works created by more than thirty intergenerational Colombian artists, the first museum exhibition in the country to present works of art made in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Virosis addresses the ongoing dispossession of people living with HIV/AIDS in the Colombian context. It was the first first comprehensive attempt at creating an archive of memories of HIV/AIDS in the country and it addressed the ways in which sexual and gender minorities, including sex workers, transgender people, Indigenous people and other marginalized poor people have been disproportionately affected by the disease and dispossessed by the government’s inefficient response to it in the last 40 years. Documented and reported by the national media in a sensationalized and stigmatized manner, the pandemic has nonetheless maintained a distinct silence surrounding the actual histories of living and dying with HIV/AIDS within the general population. Addressing issues of class, economy, access to health care, social and political contexts, media representation, and art history, the exhibition surveyed the “memories” of AIDS in Colombia.
As part of his 2023 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of Bogota (MAMBO) artist Carlos Motta was commissioned by Penn-Mellon to create Hilos de sangre (2023), a new research project on display carried out in close collaboration with historian Pablo Bedoya. The work consists of a new archive of stories, experiences, memories and documents related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Colombia; the most comprehensive effort of its kind in the country.
Featured artists include: Aarón Zea, Álvaro Restrepo, Camilo Acosta, Santiago Lemus, Camilo Godoy, Constanza Camelo, David Lozano, Elektra KB, Fernando Arias, J Triangular, Jorge Rodriguez Sastre, Juan de la Mar, Koray Duman, Ted Kerr, Carlos Motta, Lorenzo Jaramillo Luis Caballero, Luis Fernando Zapata, Madorilyn Crawford, Manu Mojito, Manuel Velandia, Mateo Sierra, Miguel Ángel Cárdenas, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Paul Sebastián Mesa, Rafael Baena Cumplido, Rosario Jaramillo, Luis Ospina, Santiago Echeverry, SPIT! (Sodomitas, Pervertides, Invertides, Juntes! - Carlos Motta, John Arthur Peetz, Carlos Maria Romero), Tomás Espinoza, Wilson Díaz.
Official website: https://www.mambogota.com/exposicion/virosis-arte-y-vih-en-colombia-1981-2023/
Citation
Viola, Eugenio, Juaniko Moreno, Carlos Motta, and Pablo Bedoya. 2023. 'Virosis: Art and HIV/AIDS in Colombia (1981-2023)'. Dispossessions in the Americas. https://staging.dia.upenn.edu/en/content/ViolaE001/








