Engineer's Daughter

show 420

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with(out) with(in) the very moment

Ed Aulerich-Sugai: Power in Storage Mask 3, 1989. Watercolor, mixed media on paper, 28 ½ x 27 in. Courtesy of Ed Aulerich-Sugai Collection and Archive.

Mere months ago a headline in The New York Times trumpeted "HIV Is Reported Cured in a Second Patient, a Milestone in the Global AIDS Epidemic," and the world reacted with a complicated kind of joy. A similarly complex set of emotions permeate the excellent group show With(out) With(in) the very moment currently on display at the SFAC Main Gallery: the poignancy of remembering the countless we lost, mixed with the defiance of activism and the joy of liberation. Curator Margaret Tedesco centers the work of Ed Aulerich-Sugai, a local artist and gardener at the SF Conservatory of Flowers who died of AIDS-related complications in 1994, alongside 7 other Bay Area artists, some of whom have been living and working here for decades. According to Tedesco, who as an artist and long-time SF resident herself has made powerful work about the HIV/AIDS crisis, “This show attempts to revisit a lineage common among artists in the 1980s who witnessed and embodied the activism and community—and to continue our discourse that effects all of our lives today.” As is customary with the exhibitions she curates, Tedesco commissioned an essay for the show, this time from writer Anton Stuebner, and visitors receive a beautifully-produced edition of his writing as they exit the gallery (you can also download a pdf here). I read it over dinner tonight and was crying by the time I got to the end:

Joy feels increasingly precarious, perhaps even irresponsible, when faced with our deeply troubled and fucked-up world. And there are many days when it's just too damn hard and painful to muster it up. But when I remember those queer ancestors, and the people who came before me, I also think about how they shaped my relationship to art and activism. Hell, I think about how they shaped my sense of self; without them, I wouldn't have the tools to figure out who I am. That's something to feel pretty fucking joyful about.

And it's my responsibility—and yours—to honor those we've lost by feeling joy and rage and loneliness. It is our responsibility to carve out livable lives for ourselves. Denying our own capacity to feel, and the capacity of others to feel—that's the killer. And we certainly need hope, for fuck's sake. Without it, what's the point?