Day With(out) Art 2024: Red Reminds Me . . .

This event does not require registration; see further details below.

The Harvard Art Museums are proud to partner with Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2024, by presenting Red Reminds Me . . ., a program of seven videos exploring the emotional spectrum of living with HIV today.

The program features newly commissioned work by Gian Cruz (Philippines), Milko Delgado (Panama), Imani Maryahm Harrington (United States), David Oscar Harvey (United States), Mariana Iacono and Juan De La Mar (Argentina/Colombia), Nixie (Belgium), and Vasilios Papapitsios (United States).

Through the red ribbon and other visuals, HIV and AIDS have been long associated with the color red and its connotations—blood, pain, tragedy, and anger. Red Reminds Me . . . invites viewers to consider a complex range of images and feelings surrounding HIV, from eroticism and intimacy, mothering and kinship, luck and chance, memory and haunting. The commissioned artists deploy parody, melodrama, theater, irony, and horror to build a new vocabulary for representing HIV today.

The title is drawn from the words of Stacy Jennings, an activist, poet, and long-term survivor with HIV, who writes: “Red reminds me, red reminds me, red reminds me . . . to be free.” Linking “red” to freedom, Jennings flips the usual connotations of the color and offers a new way of thinking about the complexity of living with HIV. Just as a prism bends and refracts light, Red Reminds Me . . . expands the emotional spectrum of living with HIV. It shows us that while grief, tragedy, and anger define parts of the epidemic, the full picture contains deep, nuanced, and sometimes contradictory feelings.

Starting December 1, the videos will be available to stream for free at https://visualaids.org/dwa2024.

Following the in-person screening at the Harvard Art Museums, there will be a conversation with filmmaker Imani Harrington and Harvard professors Michael Bronski and Evelynn Hammonds. Ben Reininga will serve as moderator.

Imani Maryahm Harrington is a visual conceptual artist, filmmaker, playwright, writer, and author who studied dramatic and performing arts at Cornish College, later combining her theater skills into a B.A. in theater and the humanities. She received her M.A. in clinical social psychology from New College of California and later acquired an M.F.A. in studio practice from San Francisco Art Institute. Harrington’s plays tackle the dramatic tensions between fact and fiction, addressing subjects related to education about the sociopolitical body and examining topics such as slavery, HIV/AIDS, cultural heritage, female sexuality, and the spirit world.

Michael Bronski is Professor of the Practice in Media and Activism in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. He has been involved with LGBT politics since 1969, as an activist, organizer, writer, publisher, editor, and independent scholar.

Evelynn Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. Professor Hammonds’s areas of research include the histories of science, medicine, and public health in the United States; race, gender, and sexuality in science studies; feminist theory; and African American history. She is currently director of the Project on Race & Gender in Science & Medicine at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.

Ben Reininga is the former head of editorial at Snapchat, where he established partnerships with major news organizations, built protocols to fight misinformation, and worked to create a more engaging and diverse content experience. Prior to that, he spent more than a decade in editing, video production, and newsroom management. He is currently a Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow of Journalism Innovation at Harvard, where he’s focusing on the rise of creator journalists on social platforms, identifying responsible ways to harness growing audience interest while maintaining credibility.

Visual AIDS is a New York–based nonprofit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.

Free admission, but seating is limited and registration is encouraged. You can register by clicking on the event on this form, beginning Thursday, November 28, after 10am.

The screening will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Doors will open for seating at 1:30pm.

The Harvard Art Museums offer free admission every day, Tuesday through Sunday. Please see the museum visit page to learn about our general policies for visiting the museums.

Support for the screening is provided by the Richard L. Menschel Endowment Fund.

The Harvard Art Museums are committed to accessibility for all visitors. For anyone requiring accessibility accommodations for our programs, please contact us at am_register@harvard.edu at least 48 hours in advance.