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.

Official website: https://www.mambogota.com/exposicion/virosis-arte-y-vih-en-colombia-1981-2023/