Art in AIDS (1981-1997)

The AIDS crisis is a major turning point in contemporary history, in art also. This book looks at its impact on artists and activists American and European, from the first census of cases of the disease, in 1981, to the therapeutic revolution of the late 1990s. From Cindy Sherman to Derek Jarman, from Niki de Saint Phalle to Jeff Koons, from Gilbert & George to Jenny Holzer, from Michel Journiac to David Wojnarowicz, from Izhar Patkin to Zoe Leonard, or In what ACT UP produces, we see the same shock in the representations which could no longer be the same, and for good reason. The images are inhabited by everything that worked in Western societies. at the time of the epidemic, and first of all the worst of themselves, which was let off steam in a social space undermined by the crisis. They remember it, as forces of resistance that was put up against him. They are witnesses to the will intractable not to give in, but also to get out by all means from a deadlocked situation. From a large number of visual representations, this account of the crisis epidemic thus opens onto a political, economic and social history of this era fatally haunted by catastrophe.