Pride Guide 2002

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE C-11

Express yourself, protect yourself: Art Action AIDS

by John A. Chaich

Art should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.

--Keith Haring

We have to not only affirm ourselves as an identity but as a creative force. -Michel Foucault

Cleveland-AIDS is a crisis of connections to information, to services, to each other. The very behaviors that put at risk-sex, drugs, love-are the very behaviors in which we find connection. In between, there are not always answers but there are always more questions. And it takes more than information to find the answers. It takes community, creativity, ingenuity and integrity.

This December, the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland launched a new social marketing campaign to connect men who have sex with men with information and ideas through art. Over the next year, Art Action AIDS will highlight the work of regional visual artists

in eight sets of full-color billboards, postcards and print ads throughout the city. The featured artists are gay and straight, male and female, affected and connected. The viewer, the campaign hopes, will be curious just as the art may be ambiguous.

Art Action AIDS debuted for World AIDS Day with billboards on the high traffic strips of Carnegie Avenue near the Cleveland Clinic and Lorain Avenue near the West Side Market. The stark black and white photography of Nannette Bedway captured the smooth torso of an African American young man. Cleverly cropped, the image doesn't allow us to see his hands stretching below his waist: Are they lost in pleasure or bound in pain or both?

Just in time for Valentine's Day and National Condom Awareness Week and visible from the West Shoreway near both Bounce and Club Cleveland, billboards featuring the simple drawings of young gay artist J. Morrison pictured two androgynous though seemingly male figures touching, embracing, kissing and connecting. In fact, their tongues become one. From this interlocking motion, Morrison fills the torso of the figures with hundreds of dots. Are these the virus

Come. Feed your soul.

Over 100 vendors offering

Hot Food, Cool Stuff, and Live Music

in Historic Lincoln Park

waiting to sneak in the dental-flossed gum or paper-cut lip? Or are they thousands of neurons excited at lust at first sight?

Culminating Minority Health Month in April, the poetic, colorful portrait of Anna Arnold features a man and woman staring out of the canvas. The sensitivity in their eyes speaks of fear, love and commitment yet et we d do not know their connection: are they siblings, lovers, friends, caregivers? Printed in both English and in Spanish, these postcards were distributed to 5,000 homes in the Latino community as a door-to-door insert in Cleveland Life magazine.

DOUGLAS LUCAK

This June, Art Action AIDS celebrates gay pride month with the dramatic, textural photographs of acclaimed Cleveland artist Douglas Lucak. Look for the images in the Gay People's Chronicle and Outlook and at the Pride parade. You wont be able to our want to miss them. After photographing dozens of men's nipples of all shapes, sizes and colors, Lucak provides four single nipples as a metaphor: AIDS is highly sensitive topic but is it close to our hearts?

Just as there is no latex-covered magic wand to cure AIDS, there is no one answer to these questions. Nor should there be. Art is left for interpretation just as sexuality is open for exploration and safety for negotiation. Art may not save lives, but it does open minds.

Art Action AIDS hopes to remind, reinvigorate and rejoice. The creativity and tenacity of the queer community are two of our biggest strengths and talents. Over twenty years into the epidemic and over thirty years after Stonewall, with pride in ourselves, may we continue to protect and provoke ourselves.

John A. Chaich is a Cleveland arts programmer and writer.

Proud of PRIDE!

TreMont

Arts & Cultural Festival historic setting⚫ contemporary art

Saturday, September 21 11am to 7pm Sunday, September 22 12pm to 6pm

Juried Art Show at Kelly Randall Gallery, Friday, Sept 20, 7-10 PM