Art and Aids 2

Studies in World Art, Book 10

By: Edward Lucie-Smith

Narrated by: Christopher Selbie

'AIDS art' is essentially an American invention. It has now manifested itself in a large number of different locations, but is almost invariably based on a model of artistic activity that evolved in the United States - one that was a response to the impact made by the epidemic on sections of American society. This means, among other things, that the best-known artworks connected with AIDS have nearly always had homosexual themes. The social and economic effect of heterosexually transmitted AIDS in Africa has, by contrast, played a distinctly minor role. AIDS art enterprises in Africa - for example, in South Africa with embroideries made by Zulu women; in Togo with t-shirts printed with messages addressed to young people - have inevitably seemed like paler copies of things that had already been done in the United States. They have also, much more than is the case with their American exemplars, seemed like bourgeois enterprises with no lasting social impact at any deep level. This was not so in the United States.

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