For Day With(out) Art 2026, Visual AIDS presents seeds in a dying colony, a program of four newly commissioned videos that move through the afterlives of colonialism and the ongoing HIV epidemic. Across fractured histories and landscapes marked by extraction, the works trace how systems of power shape the body, memory, and experiences of care. The hour-long program will feature short videos by artists from across the world. Join us for a discussion after the screening.
The program responds to a moment marked by deepening neocolonialism and mass desensitization to violent, preventable death, including recent spikes in HIV cases and deaths. Driven by cuts to international aid programs like USAID and PEPFAR, this resurgence reveals how access to care remains shaped by broader systems of U.S. and Western power that determine whose lives are protected and whose deaths are allowed to pass in silence.
seeds in a dying colony is an exploration of how systems organized around abandonment and premature death produce disconnection from the self and disruptions of memory, history, and cultural continuity. At the same time, movement, ritual, and beauty emerge as forms of recalibration, methods of reclaiming the body and reorienting toward life within conditions designed to constrain it.
The title draws from the work of psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon, whose writings on colonial violence and the racialized psyche have been taken up by some AIDS historians and theorists to understand how global health systems, formed through colonial rule, ultimately determine the order, quality, and conditions under which people receive healthcare, while also overwriting indigenous knowledge of healthy, embodied living. Rather than isolating HIV as a singular issue, seeds in a dying colony gestures toward the tension between systems of domination that appear enduring and the latent power and ancestral knowledge that remains in their undoing.
The program will premiere on/around December 1, 2026, World AIDS Day/Day With(out) Art, with screenings at museums, galleries, universities, and organizations around the world.
ABOUT THE FILMS
Edgar Hudson (Tanzania), There is an Elephant in the Room | A young person flees home after a life-altering discovery, carrying the weight of things that cannot be said out loud. He encounters an activist fighting to be heard and a care worker sustaining others through daily acts of survival. Through dance and movement, the film offers a quiet story of survival, exile, and return, asking what it takes to face the elephant that everyone knows is there.
Bruna Kury and Matheus Mello (Brazil/Spain), VENGANZA TRAVESTY (TRAVESTY REVENGE) | A visual manifesto that transforms the HIV virus into a mirror of empire, where data, propaganda, and flesh collide. Through a frenetic digital collage, the film exposes the biopolitical machinery that controls the body and weaponizes borders against life itself.
Sido Lansari (Morocco/France), ON A BRIGHT DAY (C'ÉTAIT UN JOUR LUMINEUX) | This film weaves together archival echoes, poetic fragments, and testimonies of Arab queer lives touched by HIV, spanning generations and geographies. Through the voices of the dead and the living, the film transforms silenced histories into a collective act of remembrance and resistance.
Micaela Cyrino (Brazil), How to project your voice without causing an earthquake | Carolina lives alone in an apartment on the outskirts of São Paulo. Every morning she faces the city’s frenetic pace during the long commute from her home to work. In her thoughts, her grandmother’s wisdom always returns; in her headphones, it's always the same rap. In her bag, she carries the book of recipes, baths, and blessings she inherited from her grandmother and the desire to end the day well.
ABOUT VISUAL AIDS
Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over. Founded in 1988, Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to raising AIDS awareness and creating dialogue around HIV issues today, by producing and presenting visual art projects, exhibitions, public forums, and publications—while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. Visual AIDS uses the power of art as a catalyst to engage public response, dialogue and scholarship around HIV/AIDS through presenting contemporary art exhibitions, artist projects, public events and publications.
We offer a variety of accessibility supports to help ensure all visitors can fully participate. Contact us at kam-accessibility@illinois.edu with any questions or to request accommodations.
Krannert Art Museum acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council.
