Ferguson is Everywhere

Photograph

-

DePaul Art Museum

Name/Title

Ferguson is Everywhere

Entry/Object ID

2017.10

Description

Three pill bottles in front of a sign that says Aiyana Jones.

Context

Theodore (Ted) Kerr contests dominant HIV/AIDS narratives as a strategy for reconsidering mainstream versions of the AIDS crisis, as well as how generally accepted histories of HIV/AIDS do not adequately attend to the contingent factors of race, class, and geographic location. The lenticular photo-collages Kerr collaboratively produced with filmmaker Jun Bae and social worker Shawn Torres for his series Rayford Home 1987 are extensions of Kerr’s research into the life and death of Robert Rayford, a black teenager in St. Louis who died of HIV-complications in 1969 as determined by medical research performed in 1987.

Acquisition

Accession

2017.09-10

Source or Donor

Kerr, Theodore

Acquisition Method

Purchase

Credit Line

Courtesy of the artist

Made/Created

Artist Information

Kerr, Theodore
Torres, Shawn

Date made

2016

Ethnography

Notes

North America Canada

Lexicon

Getty AAT

Concept

appropriation (imagery), collages (visual works), visual works (works)

Hierarchy Name

Associated Concepts (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name)

Facet

Associated Concepts Facet, Objects Facet

Dimensions

Dimension Description

overall

Width

20 in

Length

16 in

Interpretative Labels

Label Type

Cultural/Historical Context

Label

Rayford’s case has been overlooked for decades, with mainstream historians opting instead to begin their AIDS-timelines with the 1984 death of white, New York City-based flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas, falsely labeled “Patient Zero.” Kerr connects the erasure of Rayford from collective understandings of the AIDS crisis in America to the mass incarceration, criminalization, and death at the hands of police violence disproportionately endured by black individuals today. In his artwork, Kerr superimposes images related to Michael Brown (an unarmed 18-year-old killed by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO, in 2014) and Michael Johnson (a 23-year-old criminalized, felony convicted, and sentenced by a Missouri court to over 30 years in prison for “recklessly” transmitting and exposing others to HIV) atop a found image of Rayford’s childhood home. (D.Orrendorf, Curator, 2017)