World AIDS Day remembered

A professor and two students unfurled a cloth shroud and wrapped it around a sculpture then tied it up with string outside the University Art Museum Friday.

Their action was part of a special program called "A Day Without Art: World AIDS Day," at the Art Museum. Every year museums across the country use this day to increase awareness about the ways in which artists have suffered from AIDS. Many close their doors while others hold special events.

The annual Day Without Art was first observed on World AIDS Day in 1989 when artworks in museums and galleries were shrouded as a reminder of the devastation AIDS was having on art communities.

Cal Sate Long Beach art professor Carlos Silveira, who helped the students in shrouding the sculpture, gave a talk about his piece "Unheard Voices," featured in the Art Museum's current exhibition, "Long Beach 2000: Faculty Biennial."

"It is a work in collaboration with the community," Silveira said. "It is really important to hear their voice."

Silveira met with several AIDS support groups and worked with four women suffering from the disease to create the provocative site-specific installation. The piece is comprised of photography, a column of candles and strings of different colored pills hanging over dozens of prescription pill bottles on the floor.

The women who collaborated with Silveira were members of "A Gathering of Women," a group of anonymous participants in the CARE Program, an organization sponsored by St. Mary's Hospital and dedicated to helping women living with HIV or AIDS.

"I had a concept that was quite different," Silveira said. "I would not have been able to come up with this work if they had not shared their struggle."

A friend donated the empty pill bottles used in the installation, Silveira said. The bottles represent the incredible number of pills his friend has taken since being diagnosed with HIV in November 1996.

Two large photographs hanging above the pill bottles show one woman with hands crossed and another holding a young man.

"Both these women have children and have lost their husbands to AIDS after being infected by them," said Jan Sampson, a local AIDS volunteer who spoke at the event. "Both of these moms have very emotional stories to tell."

The infection rate for HIV is very high in Long Beach, Sampson said. The gay community has been very active in fighting the epidemic, but many wives have been infected by their husbands and do not find out until they go to the hospital to have a baby.

"A lot of these families have table tops covered with pill bottles," Sampson said. "The whole family is infected and the pills become a big part of their lives."

World AIDS Day was initiated in 1988 to annually remind people what they can do to fight against AIDS and help what is now over 34 million people infected with the disease worldwide.

Candle light vigils, special programs and free AIDS testing took place all over the Southland Friday. And thousands of people wore the now ubiquitous AIDS red ribbon as they remembered those they have lost.

"There's no cure for AIDS, but there is a lot of hope," Sampson said. "One of the women in this group has been infected for 23 years."

Caroline Limuti/Daily Forty-Niner

"Unheard Voices," the artwork of Cal State Long Beach art professor Carlos Silveira displayed in University Art Museum.