Gregg Bordowitz's proclamation, ‘the AIDS crisis is still beginning' greets viewers as they enter the exhibition MAKE ART / STOP AIDS.  It serves as a powerful reminder that, with 40 million people infected with HIV around the world, the situation continues to be extremely urgent. 

The work in the exhibition lays evidence to the fact that artists all over the world have played a key role in educating people about AIDS and strategically combating common stereotypes about HIV/AIDS and those who are living with it.  

David Gere and Robert Sember, both UCLA professors who are part of a group of activists, artists and scholars collectively referred to by the same name as the exhibition, organized MAKE ART / STOP AIDS.  This exhibition opened at the Fowler Museum in February and will go on to travel abroad.  The exhibition provides the opportunity to see seminal works of art from the 80's and 90's such as ACT UP's (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) triangular florescent sign SILENCE = DEATH and David Wojnarowicz's scrawled out childhood self-portrait One Day This Kid... in which, using plain language, Wojnarowicz maps out scenes from a miserable life, including subjection to prejudice, violence, and finally suicide all because the boy in the photo has discovered that "he desires to place his naked body on the naked body of another boy."

This exhibition uses wall text to move through questions:   What is AIDS? Who lives, who dies? Why are condoms controversial? Are you afraid to touch? When was the last time you cried? Why a red ribbon? Are you ready to act? The text provides many shocking statistics about the current state of AIDS.  Throughout there is an acknowledgement that statistics are only one part of the picture, that doctors and public health officials cannot effect social change alone.  This is especially important because, while AIDS was once primarily associated with gay men living in the Unites States, today the fastest growing groups of people living with AIDS are in South Africa and India where cultural beliefs about sexuality and how people are aloud to use their bodies makes condoms, and treatment difficult to obtain.

This exhibition is a must experience: emotional, educational, empowering.

- Nancy Lupo

(Images top-bottom: Daniel Goldstein and John Kapellas, Medicine Man, 2007, mixed media; Gideon Mendel, Breaking the Silence, 2000, archival silver bromide print on Ilford paper; Robert Gober, Untitled (Candle), 1991, beeswax, strong, human hair.  All images courtesy of the Artists and UCLA.