The AIDS Memorial Quilt as Cultural Resistance for Gay Communities

Abstract

The AIDS Memorial Quilt, an historic fabric monument to many who have died of AIDS, originated within the gay community of San Francisco in 1987. This paper explores the quilt's inception as a response to discourses that developed with the appearance of the AIDS epidemic, discourses that promoted the further stigmatization and marginalization of gay men. I demonstrate that the images evoked within the quilt can be seen to counter and resist the condemning images of gay men constructed specifically within biomedical discourse about AIDS. The quilt's implications for certain gay communities are also discussed, including it's tendency to draw gay men out of physical and social isolation into a collective experience where the positive reconstruction of gay identity becomes possible.The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is an historic community-based art project that was begun in San Francisco when it seemed that no other form of expression could allow for movement beyond the devastation, paralysis, and isolation caused by the AIDS epidemic. The quilt was conceptualized by Cleve Jones, a gay activist and protege of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay supervisor of San Francisco whose term in office ended in assassination. Jones fashioned the first quilt panel in February of 1987 to memorialize his best friend, actor Marvin Feldman, who had died of AIDS four months earlier. By that time, more than a thousand San Franciscans had died of AIDS, many of whom had lived in the heavily gay-populated Castro area.

Patches of grief and rage: Visitor responses to the NAMES project AIDS Memorial Quilt

“…Although it serves a nonpartisan function as curator of the Quilt, the Quilt is interpreted as a dramatic and important political symbol (cf. Sturken 1992;Krouse 1994;MueUer 1995). Many signature square comments are political in nature, expressing anger and outrage at government inaction and AIDS stigmatization in mainstream culture.…”

“…As the following comments illustrate, the Quilt is interpreted by some visitors as a medium through which to challenge the social marginality and discrediting of PHAs in mainstream culture (cf. Krouse 1994;Mueller 1995): We are all part of the same family! Leslie.…”

“…As a response to the public stigmatization of persons living with HIV and AIDS (PHAs), AIDS organizations (e.g., ACT-UP) and individuals in the gay and HIV communities collectively responded with efforts designed to symbolically challenge the way PHAs and AIDS are viewed and remembered by mainstream culture. The Quilt is one such effort (Brown 1992;Sturken 1992;Jones 1993;Krouse 1994;Mueller 1995).…”

Hegemonic disguise in resistance to domination: the Clothesline Project's response to male violence against women

“…The most widely studied of women's fabric arts is the quilt, a traditional form that has received recent critical attention from folklorists, art theorists, literary scholars, historians, and sodal scientists alike (Elsley 1996;Hawkins 1993;Hillard 1994;Krouse 1994;Torsney and Elsley 1994;Elsley 1990;Ferrero, Hedges and Silber 1987;Robinson 1983;Hedges 1980). Several broad and general surveys of quilt-making and quilts have emerged which discuss their utilitarian and symbolic functions (Pershing 1996;Elsley 1996;Ice 1993;Benson and Olsen 1987;Roach 1985;Lippard 1983;Dewhurst, MacDowell, and MacDowell 1979;Mainardi 1973).…”

“…Krouse (1994) calls the AIDS Quilt a "text that resists the marginalizing, stigmatizing and 'othering' images of dominant discourse" (p. 78). She explores the Quilfs response to condemning discourses about gay men and explains how it counters these discourses by "deconstructing objectifying images" (p. 72) and reconstructing positive, affirmative images.…”