The Queens Museum’s Open AIR Artist Services program in Collaboration with Visual AIDS invite you to join them for a screening of “Radiant Presence”, an artist talk by Luna Luis Ortiz, and a Voguing Ball honoring the 26th annual Day With(out) Art in conjunction with Worlds AIDS Day.

Day With(out) Art was launched by Visual AIDS in 1989 as a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis in recognition of World AIDS Day.  This event is free and open to the public.

Schedule of Events

3-5:30 pm Radiant Presence Screening on Loop
For this year’s Day With(out) Art 2015, Visual AIDS is working with nine influential artists, activists and curators—Bill Arning, Ian Alteveer, Chris Vargas, Rae Lewis-Thornton, Mark S. King, Allen Frame, Maria Mejia, Jack Mackenroth, and Kimberly Drew (bios below)—to present Radiant Presence. Radiant Presence is a digital slideshow with images from the Visual AIDS’ Artist+ Registry, the largest database of works by artists with HIV/AIDS.

3-4 pm Artist talk with Luna Luis Ortiz
Artist and Activist, Luna Luis Ortiz will talk about his work as a photographer and living with HIV since 1986. He will discuss the evolution of ballrooms, voguing and the impact of AIDS in the house and ball scene.

4-5:30 pm Voguing Ball
Come ready with some fierce lqqks for a chance to win one of the prizes! DJ and Commentator TBD. Host: Luna Luis Ortiz Prizes: $100 Open to All Vogue, $100 Open to All Runway

About Day With(out) Art
Visual AIDS launched Day Without Art in 1989 as a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis in recognition of World AIDS Day. At its height Day Without Art included over 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, colleges and high schools. In 1997, Day With(out) Art became a day with art, to recognize and promote increased programming of cultural events that draw attention to the continuing pandemic. It had become clear that active interventions through the annual program were far more effective than actions to negate or reduce the programs of cultural centers. Though the name was retained as a metaphor for the chilling possibility of a future day without art or artists, Visual AIDS added parentheses to the program title, Day With(out) Art, to highlight the proactive programming of art projects by artists living with HIV/AIDS, and art about AIDS, that were taking place around the world. As the AIDS crisis and our understanding of it evolve, so must our actions. Visual AIDS continues to produce year-round program of thought-provoking exhibitions, events and artist editions promoting HIV prevention and AIDS Awareness.

About Luna Luis Ortiz
Luna Luis Ortiz was born in New York City in 1972. In 1986, he was infected with HIV at the age of 14 from his first sexual experience. In 1988, he began his journey as an HIV awareness spokesperson for youth living with HIV under the leadership of Ann Northrop and Andy Humm at the Hetrick- Martin Institute. Over the years Luna has dedicated his life to HIV prevention for youth in New York. New York City Mayors Edward Koch and David Dinkins notice his early work as a youth activist and artist, which rewarded Ortiz to receive letters of appreciation from both Mayors. He then studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and has worked with photographers, David LaChapelle, Lisa Ross, Shedrich Williames and Nan Goldin. He became a member of the Archive Project at Visual AIDS in 1995; where the work of artist living with AIDS is preserved and celebrated. His photography has been included in photography exhibitions at New York galleries as well as the Boston Center of the Arts and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in NY. He was a featured artist living with HIV on MTV and VH1, TeleMundo, ABC, NY1, MSNBC, LOGO and PBS documentaries. His work graced such publications as The New York Times, The London Observer, The Advocate, POZ, The NY Daily News, OUT, VIBE, Gay Times (London), Teen People, BLUE and A&U.

About the Video Collaborators
Ian Alteveer is associate curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he recently organized the 2015 Roof Garden Commission: Pierre Huyghe. He also curated the prior two commissions with Dan Graham and Günter Vogt (2014) and Imran Qureshi (2013), as well as William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time (2013–14). He was part of the curatorial team for the Met’s Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years (2012), which traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and worked on the Museum’s presentations of Ellsworth Kelly Plant Drawings (2012); Richard Serra Drawing (2011); John Baldessari: Pure Beauty (2010); Francis Bacon: A Retrospective (2009); and Jasper Johns: Gray (2008). Before the Met he was graduate curatorial fellow and curatorial assistant at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, where he worked on a groundbreaking survey of art from New York in the 1970s and early ‘80s, The Downtown Show: 1974–84 (2005). He has an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and completed his qualifying exams for a PhD in the history of art at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, where he is writing a dissertation on the early institutional history of California Institute of Arts and art in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Ian was also a visiting critic at the Yale University School of Art where he taught critical practice to first-year MFA students from 2008 to 2013.

Bill Arning is the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston where he has organized solo exhibitions of Marc Swanson, Marilyn Minter, as well as an upcoming survey of Houston’s hometown hero Mark Flood. From 1985 to 1996, Arning was director of White Columns in New York City where he organized groundbreaking first solo shows for many of the best known artists of his generation including John Currin, Cady Noland, and Jim Hodges as well as ACT-UP at White Columns: We are Fighting for your lives too! In 1993 Arning organized the first exhibition about gender and sexuality in South America, Maricas at the Center Cultural Ricardo Rojas at the University of Buenos Aires.He has written texts for retrospectives of Jim Hodges, Keith Haring, and Donald Moffett as well as other writing for books by Elmgreen and Dragset and Lawrence Rinder, and has written an essay on the art market and AIDS for the upcoming publication ArtAIDSAmerica being organized by the Tacoma Art Museum.

Kimberly Drew received her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies, with a concentration in Museum Studies. An avid lover of black culture and art, Kimberly first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media.

Allen Frame is an artist and writer, represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York where he has had solo photo exhibitions in 2005, 2009, and 2013. With Nan Goldin and Frank Franca in 1990, he co-created Electric Blanket, an epic slide show about AIDS, which toured throughout the U.S. and around the world from 1990 to 2002.He was a member of the Visual AIDS Artists Caucus and the Visual AIDS Board of Directors. In 1992, he co-directed Private Public, a series of over 200 unannounced performances about living with AIDS enacted on New York subway trains. In 1983-84, he co-adapted and directed Sounds in the Distance by David Wojnarowicz, performed in New York and Berlin.

Rae Lewis-Thornton is an Emmy Award winning AIDS Activist. She has been featured in countless magazines and media outlets, Woman’s Day, Essence, Ebony, Jet, Glamour, O, The Oprah Magazine, and shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Nightline, Dateline, Huffington Post, CNN, HLN News and BET and many more. She is an Award winning blogger, jewelry designer and artist. Rae has been living with HIV for 32 years.

Mark S. King is a writer and advocate who has been sharing his experiences living with HIV since he tested positive in 1985. His popular blog, MyFabulousDisease.com, was recognized most recently as a 2015 GLAAD Media Award nominee. His book, A Place Like This, chronicles his life in Los Angeles during the dawn of the epidemic. Twitter: @myfabdisease email: mark@marksking.com web: www.myfabulousdisease.com

Jack Mackenroth is the Senior Communications Officer for The Global Forum on MSM and HIV (MSMGF.org). In 2013 he was the creative force behind the multi-media anti-stigma and HIV testing initiative, “HIV Equal”. Jack became one of the nations most visible HIV activists after disclosing his own HIV status on season four of Project Runway. Most recently he conceptualized and launched the HIV Shower Selfie Challenge with the hashtag #weareALLclean on World AIDS Day 2014, which went globally viral in multiple countries with over 26 million social media impressions. Jack has two bachelor’s degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and one from Parson School of Design. web: jackmackenroth.com social media @jackmackenroth

Maria Mejia has immersed herself in HIV/AIDS education and become a powerful activist and motivational speaker for education, treatment, testing and prevention. She is the co-author of the book From a Warrior’s Passion and Pain, a real life account of her 26-year battle with HIV. She is part of the campaign, “Let’s Stop HIV Together” for the Center for Disease Control and Stop HIV Together/Detengamos el VIH Juntos. She is also The Global Ambassador for The Well project,  a CAB/Blogger, and a Greater than AIDS ambassador for their campaign for Women/HIV and IPV. She is also the founder of the “International Place for People With…“, largest online support group in the globe.

Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist based in the Pacific Northwest. His video Liberaceón (2011, 16 minutes) renarrates the death of Liberace as the catalyst for direct-action AIDS activism. Vargas is the founder of MOTHA–Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, a conceptual arts institution.

About Visual AIDS
Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS IS NOT OVER. Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness through producing and presenting visual art projects, while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. We are committed to preserving and honoring the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement. www.visualaids.org

About Open A.I.R. Artist Services Program
The expanded Queens Museum features a new, expanded slate of artist services, including a brand new Studio Program, with professional development features and a networking Lecture Series that draws on human resources at the Queens Museum. Open A.I.R. programs will offer professional development topics targeted specifically to all interested emerging artists.

Open A.I.R. is made possible by a generous grant from The Scherman Foundation’s Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund. Queens Teens is supported by grants from The Pinkerton Foundation, Keith Haring Foundation, and the William T. Grant Foundation. Additional support for both Open A.I.R. and Queens Teens provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Questions? Email: sespinoza@queensmuseum.org

Image: Juan Rivera, Untitled (Keith Haring), c. 1985