From photos of a mass “die-in” by Aids activists in Trafalgar Square, London, in the 1990s to plushie breasts, lips and vulvas hand-stitched by HIV-positive women, a new exhibition explores how care and protest have improved the rights and dignity of those living with the disease.
The show, Tenderness and Rage, at the Wellcome Collection, London, reflects how different groups affected by HIV, including gay men, women of colour, and refugees in the UK and around the world have found power, solidarity, comfort and joy in Aids activism and support services.
The show begins by looking back at the Aids epidemic in London in the early 1990s. A documentary, Dancing Whilst Diagnosed, tells the story of the Landmark, a drop-in centre in Tulse Hill, south London, for people affected by HIV/Aids. Former staff and volunteers recall helping people with the violence, stigma and discrimination that came with diagnosis. But they also reveal the joy and solidarity service users found in a rare safe space, including parties with DJs, drag queens and African music.
Marc Thompson, a former service user who went on to work in HIV prevention and sexual health, said: “It was the only place that I felt really safe about my HIV. I didn’t have to disclose it to anybody. There was no guessing or hiding, so that really helped me navigate those early years of my own diagnosis.”
Thompson said the exhibition title captured the experience of the 1990s Aids epidemic. “We were so hurt and damaged by everything that we were experiencing that the rage came out through loss or through protest. The tenderness resonated with me because of places like the Landmark. That was a place that we could go to get some of that rage soothed and looked after and be nursed and given a balm.”
Other exhibits address a controversial chapter in the Wellcome Trust’s own history. A cabinet features photos, press reports and posters about Act UP’s campaign to lower the high cost of the first successful HIV drug, AZT, which made it prohibitively expensive for many with the disease. The medication was produced by a pharmaceuticals company, which the trust then had a 75% stake in.
Rob Archer, a co-founder of London and Edinburgh Act Up, bought shares in the drug firm allowing him and other activists to question the company chair at its annual general meeting in January 1989. Others staged a picket outside the building, holding placards saying “We££come AZT Profiteers” and “People Not Profits”.
Archer recalled how he cross-examined the chair and chief executive about the company’s pricing policy and his attitude towards people with Aids. “I was quite pleased I got under his skin,” he said. The campaign pushed the company to slash the price of AZT.
There are also photographs from Gideon Mendel’s series The Ward, which portray the care and daily lives of four young gay men – John, Ian, Steven and Andre – on the Broderip and Charles Bell wards at Middlesex hospital. The series, which features intimate portraits of patients, loved ones and staff hugging and touching, has become iconic for humanising gay men with HIV at a time when they were being dehumanised in the media.
Mendel said: “They tried to make a place which was very emotionally supported. Staff were encouraged to hug the patients. Touch was really important.
“It was a particularly brave and powerful thing that those four young men did because there was a lot of stigma around. The rumour was that there were photographers from the [tabloids] with long lenses trying to photograph people in the ward. So people were very afraid of the camera.”
Mendel continues to be involved in HIV advocacy, and the show also includes a project he co-founded called Through Positive Eyes, which supports people living with the disease to share their own stories.
Among those featured in Tenderness and Rage is Phindile, who recently lost her job as an Aids counsellor at a clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, after the Trump administration cut funding that supported it.
Adam Rose, the curator of Tenderness and Rage, said the show reflected the changing demographics of HIV, “who’s most affected [and] which groups are more likely to come to contact or experience greater barriers to accessing treatment”.
He said his intention was to connect the history of HIV protests and care in London in the 1990s to present day campaigns around the world to emphasise why this activism “continues to be so urgent, particularly in the context of ongoing cuts to HIV funding”.
The experiences of mothers with HIV is represented by a memory store created by Angelina Namiba, which includes a published diary of her pregnancy and her daughter’s framed handprint. In the early 1990s, pregnant women were encouraged to create these boxes for their children so they would have something to remember their mothers by if they died.
Elsewhere a selection of hand-stitched female body parts by women with HIV represents the work of Catwalk4Power to improve their body image and promote discussion about sex, intimacy and sexual health, trauma, and living with the disease.
