Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Jim Hodges, Encke King, and Carlos Marques da Cruz
Untitled, 2010
Video, 60 minutes
Distributed for World AIDS Day/Day With(out) Art 2011 by Visual AIDS

Visual AIDS uses art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy—because AIDS is not over.

Untitled, which resembles a documentary, begins with a reflection on the early AIDS epidemic. The work proceeds in a nonlinear manner, introducing other political and social phenomena, moving from the sublime to the tragic and back again. By combining news footage, recordings by activists, artworks, and popular entertainment from the last two turbulent decades, the artists explore the power structures that necessitated a generation of AIDS and queer activism and that continue to exert pressure despite global protests for freedom and expression. 

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Select other participating museums:

• The Art Institute of Chicago
• Whitney Museum of American Art
• Guggenheim Museum
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Walker Art Center
• Wexner Center for the Arts
• Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
• Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
• Hammer Museum
• Tacoma Museum of Art

About the artists

Jim Hodges is a New York-based installation artist who is represented in the MCA Collection with his sculpture The end from where you are (1998). Hodges’s flower curtains have become the artist’s signature works for their combination of elegant beauty and commemoration of loss. The end from where you are, Hodges’ last flower curtain, was created especially for the MCA’s exhibition of his work included in the three-year series titled Hope = Life: Living in the New Age of AIDS. This sculpture is composed entirely of black flowers and expresses a haunting sense of mourning. Hodges transforms everyday items—including silk flowers, broken mirrors, silver chains, and clothing—into complex, elegantly reductive meditations on nostalgia, memory, identity, and loss. His work reflects the tendency of contemporary artists to explore personal issues, such as the loss of friends and colleagues to AIDS, that have both social and political relevance. His curtain works often combine natural forms, man-made objects, and discarded materials to transform the commonplace into meaningful and emotionally evocative work.  

Encke King is a film and video producer, editor, and writer based in New York.

Carlos Marques da Cruz works with artists, performers, and filmmakers internationally.