Woven Memories, Woven Grief
By: Jessy Boyer
Tags: Art History, Queer, HIV AIDS, History, Art

NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

I think I was in 3rd grade. We were learning about the body and different diseases that humans can develop. I, being obsessed with Queen at the time, knew that Freddy Mercury died from AIDS, so I researched HIV/AIDS for my 3rd grade class.

I learned all about T-cells and the immune system, all about degenerative diseases and “gay cancer”. Then, I remember coming across the AIDS Memorial Quilt. I saw a picture of the patchwork quilt laid out on the National Mall. I was 8 years old and staring at my computer screen, so confused and in awe. I read all I could find about it, even asking my mom and grandmother about it. We talked about how each patch represented a name, a person, a life that was taken away by the virus. My mom told me about the LA AIDS walk she participated in the year I was born, and about her neighbor that succumbed to AIDS. I could not really understand exactly what had happened, nor could I really comprehend that level of tragedy. But I walked into school the next day and gave my little presentation anyway.

From the first time I saw the AIDS Quilt, I became haunted by its massive emotional weight. I found myself thinking of this piece as somehow existing outside of what I knew art to be, because it was much too collective, much too domestic, and too sensitive to be “real art”.

I took an art history survey class in high school, and for our last paper we were free to discuss any genre of art we wanted. I wrote about protest art, because at that time I was a big hippie and I wanted to talk about Vietnam. However, I also wrote about the Quilt, because I had briefly learned about ACT-UP (through my own research) and had the wild thought that the Quilt was, maybe, a part of a larger framework of activism. That paper ended up being the reason that I am the art historian I am today.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt, like all art, can be examined through about a million different methodologies. I could talk about the feminist aspect: quilts are traditionally seen in the Western cannon as a “woman’s” art and has long been repressed as a true “art” because of its association to the feminine. Lesbians in the AIDS movement have also long been erased, and their efforts in organizing and building the Quilt can also be seen as a feminist act. I could talk about the Quilt in terms of Marxism: how ACT-UP attempted to “cease the means of production” on the steps of the FDA, and how the Quilt can easily (and tragically) be understood as a community of “left behinds” rallying together to create collective mourning. We could sit here and discuss individual execution of each individual patch — complete with analyzing various quotes, collages, color pallets, motifs, etc. But I won’t do that, because you can find a million essays about those things. Instead, I want to talk about memory.

I was born in 1998. The virus had, by that time, left the East Village and Castro Street ghost towns. Discussions of the bathhouses and shutting down the blood banks had already passed. People were well into their “Lazarus” effects, and were living on HIV cocktails, able to make plans at least 5 years down the line.

Memory is a tricky thing, I have come to find out. As a queer kid living in a pretty gay-friendly suburb of Southern California, I felt reasonably safe to learn from an early age about queer history. I did not know much, but AIDS was certainly something I knew a little about. Being from an artsy family, I quickly discovered how many artists and musicians and dancers died in the 1980s from this virus. I also knew perfectly well that many many of these people were gay or bisexual. I remember growing up and going into high school and hearing AIDS being talked about as a joke, or just a “dirty” sex disease. I would bring it up with some of my gay friends, asking them what they knew about the virus. Most kids my age at that time thought of it as a death sentence, that you got it from being promiscuous, and that only “that kind of gay” could contract it. This was in 2015. I was 17.

Memory fades as quickly as we allow it to fade. By denying education about queer history and AIDS, we put entire generations at risk of contracting HIV and becoming absolutely ignorant to the passion and struggle for queer rights in this country. For far too long, we have forgotten what the central idea of the Quilt was: memorial. Remembering our brothers, sisters, and siblings lost to ignorance, greed, and fear.

I have been obsessed with quilts for a while now. I think the idea of weaving fibers together to create a textile that can be used for warmth is so human and so beautiful. Memorial quilts have a long standing history in many cultures, across socio-economic status and race. There is almost nothing more poetic than wrapping yourself up in memory via a quilt woven in the loving memory of a lost soul. The AIDS Quilt invites us to wrap ourselves in undying love. It allows us to connect with human lives stretching back decades. We can hold onto a name of someone we have never met, and we can pinpoint when their life turned into a greater legacy.

The AIDS Quilt holds my memories of being a young queer kid trying to understand where I came from, and if there was anyone else like me. It holds Rock Hudson. It holds Lester Weaver’s best friend. It holds Larry Foto, “A BELOVED SON”. The fabric itself holds the thousands of hands it took to create this burial.

I truly believe that this piece is the best introduction to contemporary queer(ed) art out there. The Quilt does exist outside of “Art” as we know it — the museums, galleries, auction houses. It exists beyond capital, formal analysis, or traditional categorizations of aesthetics. There is no place for this monumental fabric in a museum, let alone any dealer’s hands. It lives on its own accord in each of us. This piece alone connects all oppressed peoples: gay, Black, poor, trans, the list does on. It exists as woven thread, as a symbol of grief and passion, and as an unburied soldier in the fight against ignorance.

I would invite you to visit the National AIDS Memorial website and explore the interactive Quilt, which features a staggering 48,000 panels.

As we US citizens head into this holiday season and the end of this horrible year, let us fall back on ourselves and our own memories. As the temperatures dip down, wrap yourself in your loved ones. Remember how hard you would fight for them. Don’t ever forget that. Because now is the time to put that promise to the test.