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Oral history interview with Sur Rodney (Sur), 2016 July 12 and 15

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@ Archives of American Art

Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project

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New York (State)2 Items, Sound recording: 2 sound files (5 hr., 50 min.), digital, wav; 83 Pages, TranscriptAn interview with Sur Rodney (Sur) conducted 2016 July 12 and 15, by Theodore Kerr, for the Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project, at Rodney's studio in New York, New York. Sur speaks of his cosmopolitan upbringing in Montreal; attending the Montreal Museum School of Art and Design; adopting a "freak" aesthetic; moving to New York in 1976; the confluence of his Canadian, gay, and black identities; helping to establish Gracie Mansion Gallery; contemporary erasure of the impact of AIDS and queerness on the 1980s East Village; caring for HIV-positive friends in the 1980s and 90s; the impact of AIDS on intergenerational exchange in the gay community; the ostracizing of HIV-positive artists in the art world; working to preserve HIV-positive artists's archives before their deaths; developing a more explicit black consciousness in the mid-1990s; public silences around issues of sexuality and drug use in the art world; his body of work with Visual AIDS; the impact of effective medication for AIDS on the art world; his observations on contemporary intersections of AIDS and the art world; and his vision for a world when AIDS is over. Sur also recalls J.A. Holm, Fred Wilson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lorraine O'Grady, David Hammons, Gregg Bordowitz, Al Hansen, Buster Cleveland, Tim Greathouse, Nicolas Moufarrege, Jeffrey Deitch, Michael McDonough, Yasmin Ramirez, Keith Davis, Mysoon Rizk, Andreas Senser, David Wojnarowicz, Gil...

Record Contributed By

Archives of American Art

Record Harvested From

Smithsonian Institution

Keywords

  1. African American Artists
  2. African Americans
  3. Aids (Disease)
  4. Aids (Disease) And The Arts
  5. An Oral History Project
  6. Artists
  7. Arts Administrators
  8. Interviews
  9. Kerr, Theodore
  10. New York
  11. New York (State)
  12. Performance Artists
  13. Rodney, Sur
  14. Visual Arts And The Aids Epidemic

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