Using art to learn more about COVID-19

Gift of the Artist

Shan Kelley’s Disclosures series visualizes intimate conversations and thoughts from his experience living with HIV, drawn from dialogue with past partners, random lovers, and others to whom he has disclosed his status. In contrast to government policies that criminalize behaviors that pose a risk of HIV transmission, Kelley notes that “through disclosure there is liberation, lightness, and self-empowerment as each successive level of disclosure acknowledges an acceptance of self.”

To create these works (first included in the Galleries' 2014 exhibition Re/Presenting HIV/AIDS, co-curated by Lia Newman, Rosemary Gardner, and Davidson professors Dr. Ann Fox and Dr. Dave Wessner), Kelley perforated sheets of semi-translucent parchment paper with a fine-point needle. The sheets were then layered over papers printed with the corresponding text. The layering and obfuscation may refer to disclosure itself, and one’s revealing something that is not easily seen, such as Kelley’s status. The use of the needle is a subtle reference to transmission, health, fragility, medicalization, and mortality.

Bibliography

Fox, Ann M., Rosemary Gardner, Lia Newman, & David R. Wessner. Re/Presenting HIV/AIDS. Davidson, North Carolina: Van Every/Smith Galleries, Davidson College, 2014.

Van Every/Smith Galleries Blog: PROFS TALK ART: DR. DAVE WESSNER

REVEAL DIGITAL: Representations of HIV/AIDS: Exhibition Synopsis | Co-curators: Ann Fox & Dave Wessner