Contact Us
Carrie Patterson, Chair
Associate Professor of Art
Phone: 240-895-4252
Email: ccpatterson@smcm.edu
Office Staff: 240-895-4225
Alumni Where are they now?
Matthew Fishel (studio art, 2001) completed an MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010. Originally interested in painting, Matthew has expanded his practice to include animation, video, installation, and digital imaging. He is a frequent contributor to RedStarKGB, an ongoing collaboration of filmmakers in Baltimore. His own film, "A Short Film Regarding Possibilities", was selected by the Maryland Film Festival in 2006. See his work at http://www.matthewfishel.com
Visual Representations, Sexuality, and AIDS: Homosexual Artists Respond to the AIDS Epidemic
Abstract: The project] explores historical AIDS research, with the particular focus on homosexual artist’s of the late 20th century and their reactions to the AIDS epidemic. While this paper includes information on the politics surrounding the epidemic and responses of AIDS awareness groups, it also concentrates on how the issue of sexuality affected the artist’s response, as well as the perception of people with AIDS. This paper examines artists of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s such as David Wojnarowicz, whose work represents a direct connection to AIDS, and Robert Mapplethorpe whose work did not intend its correlation with the epidemic, but later, acquired the rhetoric of AIDS. In addition to Wojnarowicz and Mapplethorpe, this paper focuses on artists of the early 1990’s such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Robert Gober who created works to depict the shift of the AIDS epidemic. These later artists are also compared to artists of the early 20th century and strategies they used in their works to depict homosexuality. Overall, this paper explores artistic reactions to the AIDS epidemic and how these reactions coincide with issues of homosexuality.
