Aside from being a medical and biological phenomenon, the appearance of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) represented a cultural point of inflection at the end of the 20th Century. What was then called the “aids crisis” upset society’s perspective in both political and existential terms. Following its identification in 1981 and its rapid spread around the world, HIV became a health problem that affected people of all social classes and sexogenital preferences. In 1983, after the first recorded cases in Mexico, there arose a multitude of individual and collective initiatives that sought to express shock and solidarity with those affected by the disease, as well as to pressure the authorities to face the epidemic and implement preventive measures without discriminatory or degrading practices.

This exhibition offers a first survey of the productions addressing the HIV emergency by the Centro de Documentación Arkheia del MUAC, conducted as part of its mission to collect visual productions on the nexus between art and activism in Mexico. This exploration, unfinished by nature, aims to be the jumping-off point for the recovering of a highly diverse creative and political phenomenon. Here, we join the many supportive, decentralized efforts to create critical narratives on this issue.