To Love—To Die; To Fight. To Live.
*Best in Visual Arts, 2025 POZ Awards
Honoring those who organized and fought for their survival, dignity, and respect in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the exhibition “TO LOVE—TO DIE; TO FIGHT. TO LIVE. Art and Activism in the Time of AIDS” was on view March 20—April 5, 2025, at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, 133/141 West 21st Street.
Organized by artist and SVA Academic Affairs Operations Manager Michael Severance (MFA 2013 Art Practice; BFA 2011 Fine Arts) in collaboration with the Dave Harper, Executive Director of the New York City AIDS Memorial and jointly presented by SVA Academic Affairs and the Office of the Provost, “TO LOVE—TO DIE; TO FIGHT. TO LIVE.” commemorates all forms of art-based activism, 40 years after the idea for the iconic AIDS Memorial Quilt was conceived.
Work on view at the exhibition includes multiple large “blocks,” each containing eight AIDS quilt panels, courtesy of the National AIDS Memorial, San Francisco; historical posters and advertisements from the AIDS activist–artist collective Gran Fury, as well as period and contemporary Visual AIDS broadside takeaways from past Day Without Art events; and archival AIDS-crisis posters and flyers created by SVA student organizations between 1988 and 1994, courtesy of the SVA Archives. It will also include screenings of David France’s How to Survive a Plague (2012); Jim Hubbard’s United in Anger: A History of ACT UP (2014); David Wojnarowicz’s Unfinished film (with sequence in memory of Peter Hujar) (1987), courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York; Red Reminds Me (2024), seven contemporary works from Visual AIDS’s Day Without Art 2024 commission; and Surviving Voices (2023), a series of mini-documentaries with stories from women, Black/African American, Latinx, transgender, and substance-use and recovery communities that bring HIV/AIDS into contemporary context, courtesy of the National AIDS Memorial, San Francisco.
Role: Exhibition Advisor & Co-Organizer
Date: March 20—April 5, 2025
Location: SVA Flatiron Gallery, New York, NY
