30 years of Ireland's Gay Health Network celebrated in powerful new exhibition
Gay Health Network (GHN) is marking its 30th anniversary with a new visual art exhibition. Out of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness – GHN30 will comprise historical and contemporary works that capture the LGBTQ+ experience and address HIV-related stigma from the past to the present.
GHN was established in 1994 as a network of organisations and individuals in Ireland to promote awareness of HIV and sexual health among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (gbMSM). Since then, with no paid staff and little funding, it has continually provided peer-led and peer-engaged activities and actions to address the needs of gbMSM in Ireland. It has produced much of the promotional material aimed at the community and has initiated and led key research in sexual health while also addressing and challenging HIV-related stigma and discrimination.
Curated by artist Brian Teeling, the anniversary exhibition will run from Monday, May 12, to Sunday, May 25, in the Naughton Institute in Trinity College Dublin. Among an extensive list of more than 25 LGBTQ+ contributors, works from some of the most exciting emerging talent like Bill Harris, Day Magee, and Jack Scollard will be shown alongside established practitioners like Caroline Campbell, Austin Hearne and Niall Sweeney, as well as individuals like the late Christopher Robson, a prolific photographer of queer life throughout the '80s, '90s and 2000s.
Together, the pieces reflect on the grief, joy, resilience, urgency and expanse of the LGBTQ+ experience in Ireland across time and space. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of talks in the Paccar Theatre, with further details to be announced soon.
Speaking ahead of the exhibition, Teeling said: 'It's such an honour to be chosen to celebrate Gay Health Network's 30th anniversary and work with so many talented artists and an incredibly supportive team. This show is personal as we reflect on our community's strength, resilience, and enduring legacy. I feel privileged to shine a light on the beauty and sweetness that has emerged from our continued struggles, activism, and archives.'
Chairperson of GHN, Alan Coyne, added: 'Since its founding, GHN has made incredible strides, especially in its partnership with the HSE in delivering man2man.ie, research and the annual Gay Health Forum (GHF), but the work remains as vital as ever. HIV is still with us, and new challenges to sexual health and well-being continue to emerge. This GHN 30 art exhibition, made possible with a grant from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, is a celebration of how far we've come, a tribute to the resilience of our community, and a reminder that our work is far from over.'
Founder member of GHN Mick Quinlan, said: 'A year after decriminalisation of homosexuality and the legal availability of condoms, those of us involved in HIV/AIDS and queer activism realised the importance of continuing the work and the visibility of the needs of gay and bisexual men relating to HIV and AIDS and sexual health. To this end, after a meeting with groups and individuals from around Ireland, we formed the Gay Health Network (GHN) to share resources and coordinate responses and representation.'
Don't miss Out of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness – GHN30, running from Monday, May 12, to Sunday, May 25, in the Naughton Institute in Trinity College Dublin. For more information, visit gayhealthnetwork.ie.
The post 30 years of Ireland's Gay Health Network celebrated in powerful new exhibition appeared first on GCN.
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Guests attend the private view for Damien Hirst and Feliz Gonzalez-Torres' 'Candy' at Blain Southern on October 15, 2013 in London, Harvey/WireImage Until recently, Terrill served as director of global advocacy at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the controversial Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides HIV treatment and prevention around the world. (AHF has come under fire in the past for describing PrEP as 'a party drug' and for running billboard campaigns some have called stigmatizing to sex workers and people with STIs.) Terrill shares Darnaude's feelings. 'You have artists like me who lived through the holocaust of AIDS, and we know Félix's work belongs in that tradition,' he says. 'I'd argue that it's precisely because it references Ross and HIV that it's so compelling.' 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This was how he displayed work during the Helms Amendment, which made it illegal to represent AIDS or queerness.' The Helms Amendment, passed in 1987 as part of a federal appropriations bill, prohibited the use of U.S. federal funds in AIDS prevention programs to "promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual sexual activities" — also a powerful deterrent for publicly funded museums and arts institutions during the height of the AIDS crisis. According to several art scholars, González-Torres used ambiguity in his work to reach audiences in a time of extreme censorship, homophobia, and AIDS panic. 'There's a reason Félix was successful during his lifetime, unlike other gay artists at the time making art about sexuality and AIDS,' Florêncio says. 'He played with the Trojan horse thing — making art that is about something but looks like it could be about anything — in order to infiltrate the art world.' A now-famous, oft-quoted line by González-Torres, from a 1993 interview with artist Joseph Kosuth, supports this: 'At this point I do not want to be outside the structure of power…. I want to be like a virus that belongs to the institution…. So if I function as a virus, an imposter, an infiltrator, I will always replicate myself together with those institutions.' These shifting quotes raise the question: How much should curators depend on the words of the artist? Opinions vary. 'We hold Felix on too high of a pedestal if we think everything he said once, he stood by forever,' says Shawn Diamond, a lecturer on art history. 'It makes sense that some days he'd be missing Ross and say something like, 'This is all for Ross.' And other days he'd say, 'Well, the work can be taken any way.'' Censorship or Strategy? Katz believes that instead of honoring the artist's wishes, a darker, financial-based motive drives the foundation's approach — one he insists runs counter to what González-Torres wanted for his work. Katz notes that, in the high art world, labels of 'AIDS art' and even 'queer art' can limit where work can be shown and its commercial value to collectors. 'They believe that the more this work is associated with queerness or AIDS, the smaller the potential audience,' Katz says. 'That impacts money.' Terrill agrees: 'In my opinion, the foundation is concerned with maintaining high value and prestige. I don't hear anything from them about empathy or the community. I think they're motivated purely by money.' (In May of last year, the piece "Untitled" (America #3) — a single string of lights hung from the ceiling — was sold on auction at Christie's for $13.6 million). Darnaude also points to a 2021 Zoom event helmed by the FGT foundation to mark the 25th anniversary of the artist's death from an AIDS-related illness; he calls the presentation a "smoking gun" about the nonprofit's intent to downplay the role of AIDS and Laycock in González-Torres's work. After the 17:50 mark, historian Robert Hobbs cued up a slide called "Subjects Important to González-Torres" that was "put together" by Rosen. The slide attempted to show "how few works really deal with Ross" and AIDS by counting the number of pieces with Ross and "loverboys" in the titles. "There are under 50 works that deal with this," Hobbs stressed, as compared with say, the subject of politics, which numbered over 80 on the slide. In fairness, this seems to be at least one function of an artist foundation: to increase awareness, spread, and commercial value of art. It's worth noting that the Warhol Foundation isn't the same as the artist who created the work. Rather, it exists to legitimize the artwork and advance its reputation. Artist estates both protect and exploit legacies. They don't create with the purity or vision of the original artist. In one sense, it seems the Félix González-Torres Foundation is just doing its job, even if seemingly irresponsibly. However, various reports by those who have worked with the foundation in the past seem to support Katz's view — and lend credibility to his claims of antigay, AIDS-phobic erasure. For this article, multiple individuals who worked with the FGT Foundation previously — curators, gallerists, researchers — were contacted. Speaking anonymously, all described pressure to display the work in accordance with the foundation's view that it should be open to the viewer and depoliticized. However, none would speak on record; many refused to engage further when the foundation specifically was mentioned. Katz calls this a 'conspiracy of silence' in the art world. Guests at a private viewing of Damien Hirst And Felix Gonzalez-Torres's exhibition "Candy" at Blain Southern on October 15, 2013 in London, England. 'They know they're going to want to show [Félix González-Torres's work] at some point, so they don't do anything that will trouble the relationship,' he says. Additionally, Katz claims Rosen ignored some of González-Torres's dying wishes regarding his archives, including his love letters with Ross Laycock. 'Felix wanted their [love letters] read and seen,' Katz says. 'She has refused to give these materials to institutions he promised them to.' Shawn Diamond seems to corroborate this. Diamond studied the work of González-Torres for over 10 years. In his thesis about the artist, Diamond writes, 'Wall texts and gallery guides have largely abandoned context and biography, promoting a sanitized and aestheticized form of engagement.' In his research, Diamond was troubled by how the foundation appeared to restrict access to certain documents — in particular, those that are explicit about the artist's sexual relationship with Laycock. Diamond found a quote from González-Torres expressing his wish for the couple's letters to be donated to Bard College upon his passing. Even so, Diamond writes that the 'foundation retained the original copies and later donated a copy of these letters to Bard College but restricted access to them.' The Politics of Interpretation This renewed debate over González-Torres's legacy comes at a moment of rising cultural tension in the arts. In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," directing Vice President JD Vance to eliminate "improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology" from Smithsonian institutions, including museums and research centers — a development that feels darkly similar to the Helms Amendment. 'This is 2025,' Terrill says. 'We're facing a fascist takeover in the United States. The arts are under attack. Trump probably thinks the Félix González-Torres Foundation is doing the right thing, but I don't.' Florêncio agrees: 'In the current American political climate, it may be important to [the FGT Foundation] that the work is not seen as gay art.' In the exhibition "Kinderbiennale - Träume & Geschichten" in the Japanese Palais, a museum staff member arranges sweets in golden foil as part of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work of art "Untitled", Dresden, Germany, 2018Sebastian Kahnert/picture alliance via Getty Images Given the responses from the FGT Foundation and others, the idea of whether art is fixed in time or open to evolving interpretation seems central. Among those we spoke with, opinions are divided — and heated. 'Saying 'Untitled' (Portrait of Ross) is just open-ended art is like displaying the AIDS Memorial Quilt and saying it's a modern interpretation of quilt-making,' Terrill says. Patrick Davis, a queer publisher who has studied the quilt as an act of biography and material storytelling, counters: "It is indeed a modern interpretation of quilt-making. It is a domestic art historically practiced by women to provide comfort. Men making them for their dying loved ones is subversive. The quilt panels are, essentially, the size of a grave." Florêncio says, 'The work of Félix González-Torres is no longer the same work if the idea is not present.' He adds, 'The idea behind the work is the work.' Davis similarly disagrees: 'Does Van Gogh's The Starry Night not stand on its own artistic merit? Art lives beyond the artist. Limiting González-Torres's work to its original spark of brilliance restrains it.' Patrick Moore, former director of the Andy Warhol Museum, writes in his book Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality, 'If the art of Felix González-Torres is truly meant to be open to interpretation, then I propose one such interpretation. I propose claiming Felix as a gay man who died of AIDS and relating his legacy to that powerful experience. The entirety of the 'authorized' body of work by González-Torres was created while he watched his lover die and discovered that he too was dying. The work is not about formal concerns; these are only the medium in which they were created. The work speaks of trying to grieve for another person even as you watch your own death approaching.' In The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe's acerbic 1975 critique of the modern art world, he notes, 'Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.' Citing this, Davis adds,: 'González-Torres's work remains true even if meaningful text does not accompany it.' Florêncio notes that even the artist's contemporaries accused him of being 'too coy, too vague, and too beautiful' in his approach. 'Many said he was not gay enough or AIDS-y enough,' he says. 'But if the work had screamed 'gay art' from the beginning, he wouldn't have been the artist he became.' Florêncio says González-Torres 'was indirect by design, so embracing that uncertainty is part of the work.' Terrill similarly compares González-Torres to other artists of the time. 'His work was such a contrast to the art about AIDS I was familiar with, like the agitprop from ACT UP, Gran Fury, General Idea, even Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs. González-Torres's work was more subtle, less angry. It carried the undertone of grief and loss.' Andrew Hibbard, a curator who has worked with several contemporary art institutions and who worked with the FGT Foundation in 2018 to curate a González-Torres exhibit, says, 'As an artist, he was open about some things and also very cagey. You don't see many photographs of him. He didn't want that.' It's worth noting that Hibbard is the only past curator who worked with the FGT Foundation who would speak on the record; he has since left the art industry and now works for a tech company. The board members of the FGT Foundation themselves seem to have shifting views. Julie Ault, a MacArthur Fellow and editor, curated the exhibit "Afterlife: A Constellation" (2014), which rejected monolithic AIDS narratives and emphasized subjectivity in how artists like David Wojnarowicz and Martin Wong are viewed. During his lifetime, González-Torres named a work after her — 'Untitled' (Portrait of Julie Ault) — and she later published a volume on his work. Curators Elena Filipovic and Ann Goldstein helped shape some of the artist's major exhibitions, like the controversial David Zwirner show in 2017, which received accusations of AIDS erasure. These exhibitions stressed evolving, open-ended interpretations of González-Torres's work while still acknowledging its roots in illness and loss. Curator Miwon Kwon has similarly argued that González-Torres's work avoids specific meaning and instead centers on singular, unrepeatable viewer experience. Nancy Spector, who curated a major Guggenheim show while the artist was alive, once emphasized González-Torres's political and queer dimensions, but later, after the artist's death, curated exhibitions that seemed to downplay them. Musing on the board members, Hibbard says: 'They're mostly straight women. And it seems like the people pushing this critique are not straight women.' It's clear the tension isn't just about wall text or curatorial choices — it's about how queer artists are remembered and who should define that memory. Must a legacy foundation of a queer artist be run by queer people, like the Tom of Finland Foundation (an organization not without its own controversies)? At the same time, it seems necessary to let multiple interpretations of art exist. In her 1964 essay 'Against Interpretation,' Susan Sontag famously writes, 'Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.' She argues that 'interpretation in our time is more often reactionary, stifling' and that the role of criticism should be 'to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.' Hibbard muses on this. 'The question of biography is tricky,' he says. 'The issue of not alluding to HIV and AIDS in didactics makes sense to me. If you look at things González-Torres said, he was interested in AIDS not as a biological factor but as a kind of social ill. Framing it as a single issue could alienate an audience.' He adds: 'I think Félix would bristle at any effort to hammer down one meaning.' ,The Current Exhibit In the current Smithsonian exhibit — which juxtaposes González-Torres's work with selections from the National Portrait Gallery's permanent collection — the main text at the entrance makes no mention of the artist's identity as a queer or HIV-positive man. It reads, 'His work refuses to convey history in a singular authoritative voice or through linear narratives of progress. Instead, Gonzalez-Torres's practice questions and exceeds binary thinking, such as past and present, public and private, major and minor, or collective and individual.' Notably, the exhibit omits accent marks in the artist's name — though these appear elsewhere in published material. The FGT Foundation's website also omits them. However, there is a reference to the artist's Cuban heritage on wall text for "Untitled" (Portrait of Dad) (1991). "Untitled" (Leaves of Grass) (1993) notes the work's allusion to Walt Whitman but does not mention Whitman or González-Torres's sexuality, though Whitman's queerness is referenced elsewhere in the exhibit. Finally, along one wall sits "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), a pile of shimmering, multicolored candy — laid flat, like a body. Its label reads: 'Ideal weight: 175 lb.' The wall label does not explain who Ross was. "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) in present day at the Smithsonian National Portrait GalleryCourtesy Ignacio Darnaude On another spot in this room, separated from the "Untitled" work, there is a wall label that reads, "Gonzalez-Torres cared for his partner Ross Laycock, named in the candy work's title, who died from HIV/AIDS in 1991." (Darnaude, when he viewed the exhibition, doubts many visitors will make the connection to truly understand the context of the work.) Speaking on the exhibit, which presents González-Torres as one of the 20th century's greatest portraitists, Terrill says, 'When I think of Félix González-Torres, I don't think 'portraitist.' Say portraitist and I think of Grant Wood, John Singer Sargent, Romaine Brooks — not a pile of candy.' 'But,' he adds, 'if 175 pounds of candy is a portrait, who of? It's Ross. That makes the piece compelling. To say the 175 pounds is just the 'ideal weight' of the piece seems counter to the Portrait Gallery's mission. Portraits are of people, and this one is of Ross.' (It's worth noting that the artist himself defined the untitled piece as a 'portrait.') Hibbard still urges restraint. 'I'd be generous to the foundation,' he says. 'There are always a lot of interpretations. I don't think they're stifling anyone's vision. He's a hard artist to show because of the very nature of the work.' Theodore Kerr, coauthor of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, writes, 'As confused as I might be with the foundation's actions, I do think it is worth noting, celebrating, and continuing to organize around the fact that for so many of us, Félix González-Torres' work is about many things, including how we learned to and continue to process the ongoing HIV crisis.' Kerr goes on, 'Every time I go to a friend's house and I see that they, like me, have an Untitled"(Portrait of Ross) candy that they have saved for years, I get emotional. Those candies are memorials for our friends, the loved ones we lost, and the people we never had a chance to meet. No amount of attempted censure can take that connection away from us.' Davis, who publishes queer books and queer art through his journal Revel, says, 'This gets to a bigger debate. Can we separate art from the artist? Some want to cancel Picasso because he was a sexual predator. That criminality does not erase Cubism. Art requires nuance.' Diamond feels this debate mostly amounts to a request to see more from the Félix González-Torres Foundation — especially from those who survived a dark chapter in American history that the artist did not. The loudest voices calling for change are those who lived through the devastation of AIDS and fear its greatest voices being lost or, worse, intentionally erased. 'If anything,' Diamond says, 'I wish they would put out a specifically queer exhibit on Félix or at least agree to always acknowledge who Ross was. Because Ross represents everyone we lost.' He adds, 'They don't have to take a stance' on how the work must be read. 'But presenting more biographic information at exhibits would give viewers another lens through which to view it — not the only one, but another one. That would be enough. That would matter.'
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