Day With(out) Art 2025

Collage of six diverse images including people in sparkly outfits, a park with an amphitheater, two people examining a photograph, a person at a window, a man arranging papers, and two nude figures on a table.

December 1, 2025

Day With(out) Art: Meet Us Where We're At

December 1, 2025 | World AIDS Day

Online Video Program (56min)

FEATURING WORK BY
Camilo Tapia Flores (Chile/Brazil)
Camila Flores-Fernández (Peru/Germany)
Hoàng Thái Anh (Vietnam)
Kenneth Idongesit Usoro (Nigeria)
José Luis Cortés (Puerto Rico)
Gustavo Vinagre & Vinicius Couto (Brazil/Portugal)

For the 9th year, the Arts Research Center is proud to partner with Visual AIDS in support of Day With(out) Art 2025. Visual AIDS has curated Meet Us Where We're At, a program of six commissioned videos by artists that forefront the experiences of drug users and harm reduction practices as they intersect with the ongoing HIV crisis. The artists in this program were selected by a jury of artists/community workers including Eva Dewa Masyitha, Heather Edney, charles ryan long, and Leo Herrera. Presented by Visual AIDS and partnered with museums, galleries, universities, and organizations around the world.

More information at VISUAL AIDS

First Row: Realce by Camilo Tapia Flores, Ghost in the Park by Camila Flores-Fernández, The Sisters’ Journey by Hoàng Thái Anh

Second Row: Voices of Resilience by Kenneth Idongesit Usoro, ¿Por qué tanto dolor? (Why so much pain?) by José Luis Cortés, chempassion by Gustavo Vinagre and Vinicius Couto

A Day of Action & Remembrance

Since 1989, Visual AIDS has mobilized art institutions for Day With(out) Art, a day of mourning and action that uses art to respond to the ongoing HIV and AIDS crisis. Every year, Visual AIDS creates and distributes videos by artists and activists to universities, museums, art institutions, and AIDS organizations to be screened on or around December 1st, World AIDS Day. Day With(out) Art is a global event, screening in over 150 institutions, 27 countries, and translated in 12 languages.

Founded in 1988, Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to raising AIDS awareness and creating dialogue around HIV issues today, by producing and presenting visual art projects, exhibitions, public forums and publications, while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. They are committed to preserving and honoring the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement.

In 1989 Visual AIDS presented the first Day Without Art, organizing museums and art institutions nationwide to cover up their artwork, darken their galleries, and even close for the day to symbolically represent the loss of life and art due to AIDS. Since then, Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative annual project in which organizations worldwide present exhibitions, screenings, and public programs to highlight work by HIV+ artists and artwork addressing current issues around the ongoing AIDS pandemic. In 2014, Visual AIDS began commissioning short videos from artists and filmmakers, and has screened and distributed these videos as part of Day With(out) Art every year since.

Harm reduction has long been central to the AIDS movement through practices like needle exchange and safe injection sites, and people who use drugs have been affected by HIV since the earliest days of the epidemic. Meet Us Where We’re At speaks not only to the variety of physical locations where contemporary harm reduction is practiced, but also to a broader shift: centering drug users as authors of their own experiences as storytellers, cultural producers, and essential participants in the global response to HIV.

Featured Artists

Camilo Tapia Flores (he/him) is a Latin American queer artist, journalist, and DJ whose work reflects his experience as HIV-positive, focusing on bringing HIV discussions into the spaces he inhabits. From 2019 to 2022, he actively collaborated with the JEVVIH association to promote HIV awareness on Chile’s public agenda. Now based in Rio de Janeiro, he continues his activism within the underground electronic scene, raising awareness through his art and presence in the community.

Camila Flores-Fernández (she/her) is a Peruvian researcher and artist currently based in Berlin. She holds an MSc in Cultural Anthropology (KU Leuven) and is a current MA student in the EMJMD Media Arts Cultures and Erasmus Mundus scholar. Her work centers around marginalized communities and employs ethnographic and collaborative methodologies.

Hoàng Thái Anh (he/him) is an advocate for the health rights of marginalized communities in Vietnam, particularly transgender individuals, sex workers, and drug users affected by HIV. With a passion for storytelling through video, he collaborates with advisory boards, community members, and stakeholders to create impactful short films that highlight the challenges these communities face, focusing on healthcare access and harm reduction. His work ensures that their voices are heard and their experiences are authentically represented.

Kenneth Idongesit Usoro (he/him) is a young Nigerian filmmaker and Executive Director of The Colored Space, a studio championing LGBTQ+ voices. Specializing in documentary and experimental storytelling, Kenneth tackles stigmas faced by marginalized communities, particularly queer people. His work emphasizes resilience and harm reduction, using film to inspire dialogue, foster understanding, and drive social change. Passionate about authentic narratives, Kenneth leverages his creative platform to empower communities and break down barriers through impactful storytelling.

José Luis Cortés (he/him) is an artist who works across painting, performance, and video, best known for artwork inspired by his time in New York City in the early 1990s. A native Philadelphian, Cortés’ very personal work reflects the underbelly of gay life, documenting a life on the fringes of society: of sex workers, addiction, and of a rapidly-changing landscape. Through his work he validates his world and voices his identity as both a gay man and as a Puerto Rican. Cortés’ work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the country as well as in Europe. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, Out Magazine, and many other publications.

Gustavo Vinagre (he/him) is a filmmaker and documentarian who has written and directed over 14 short and six feature-length films. Having studied literature at the University of São Paulo in Brazil and film at the EICTV school in Cuba, Vinagre holds a prolific career spanning over 10 years, with films that are known for their vibrant queerness and their intimate approach to image and sound. The award-winning Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter was his first fiction feature film and premiered at Berlinale Forum in 2022. His films have won more than 100 awards and have been featured twice in Cahiers du Cinéma

Vinicius Couto (he/him) is a Brazilian artist and creative director based in Portugal, whose work explores the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, and LGBTQIA+ identity from a post-structuralist perspective. He has participated in residencies and exhibitions at institutions such as the Cairo Biennale 2018/2023, MAM-SP, and CMA Hélio Oiticica. In 2021, he held his first solo exhibition at EtopiaZgz (Spain) and was invited to perform at André Breton's house in France. In 2022, he presented the installation "Pro_cu.rar.se" in Lisbon. He is currently the curator of the Palácio do Grilo in Lisbon, continuing to investigate contemporary sociocultural and political dynamics.

Topics

Curatorial topic page, Film & Media topic page, Visual Arts topic page, Activism topic page