Gay is NOT OK

Hunter Reynolds is among a group of contemporary queer artists who confront the immensity of the AIDS crisis. HIV-positive for three decades, he has explored art as a healing mechanism by employing performance, sculpture, photography, and collage. Here, Reynolds stitched together photographically reproduced newspaper articles from the 1980s on AIDS and gay culture; over this he superimposed images from his earlier works Blood Spots, installations with enlargements of his own blood dropping onto paper, and the Mummification performances, in which he was wrapped with cellophane and tape and left to rest for hours only to later emerge from the mummy skin in a gesture of transformation and resurrection. Although his own body is his primary medium, photography has proven an ideal handmaiden for Reynolds to stitch together memory, loss, resistance, and survival.