Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are three artists whose work reflects in different ways on the Aids crisis that has devastated communities across the world since the 1980s.
Hujar, who died from Aids-related pneumonia in 1987, is the subject of a new show at Raven Row in London, the largest to date at a UK gallery. Our host Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its curators, the writer John Douglas Millar, and the artist, master printer and model for some of Hujar’s photographs, Gary Schneider.
An installation view of Gregg Bordowitz, There: a Feeling at the Camden Art Centre in London Photo: Luke Walker
The artist Gregg Bordowitz was a member of The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, founded in New York in the 1980s. Bordowitz has lived with HIV since the late 1980s, and it has fuelled his art and activism ever since, as a new show at Camden Art Centre in London demonstrates. We spoke to him about his life and work.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Abiku (Born to Die) (1988) © Rotimi Fani-Kayode, courtesy of Autograph ABP
And this episode’s Work of the Week is Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Abiku (Born to Die) (1988), a photograph in The 80s: Photographing Britain, a show at Tate Britain in London. Fani-Kayode was a key figure in the UK’s burgeoning avant-garde photography scene in the late 1980s, but died in his early 30s in 1989 from complications relating to Aids. We talk to Jasmine Kaur Chohan, the co-curator of the Tate Britain show, about the work.
• Peter Hujar—Eyes Open in the Dark, Raven Row, London, 30 January-6 April
• Gregg Bordowitz—There: a Feeling, Camden Art Centre, London, until 23 March
• The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, until 5 May
