The Visual Representation of AIDS

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The aids crisis is a major turning point in contemporary history, as well as in art. Divided into two parts, one lecture part, and the other reserved for discussion, this course seminar will focus on its impact on American and European artists and activists, from the first census of cases of the disease, in 1981, to the the therapeutic revolution, in 1997. Based on numerous visual representations inhabited by everything that worked in societies at the time of the epidemic, the reflection will aim to construct a political, economic and social history of this era haunted by catastrophe. In doing so, we will develop questions and issues specific to the history of art, by calling on the human and social sciences, and by mobilising and crossing disciplines.