Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is now hosting the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was originally created in 1989.
The work consists of 42 quilts and 23 individual panels, representative of 384 individuals affected by HIV and AIDS, and fills the vast hall’s entire floor.
The Quilt began in the US in 1985, when American activist Cleve Jones started inviting people to create textile segments to commemorate those lost to AIDS, followed by the individual panels being sewn together to form a larger quilt.
UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership founder member Siobhán Lanigan said: “The purpose of our partnership is to have the quilt seen as often as possible in as many places as possible.
!The display in the Turbine Hall marks the largest showing of the UK Quilt in its history, reaching the biggest audience it has ever known.
“With every viewing, the names and the lives of all the people commemorated and all those who could not be named, are recognised, celebrated and brought out of the shadow of the stigma that is still associated with an HIV diagnosis today.
“Everything we can do to break down that stigma is of great value. This is one big step in that direction that can be built upon in future displays.”
The partnership was formed by seven UK HIV support charities in 2014 in order to conserve and display the quilt.
Throughout the course of the quilt’s display, volunteers from the Quilt Partnership will welcome visitors and provide information and support.
There will also be a live reading of all the names featured on the panels, which will take place in the Turbine Hall at 11am and 2pm on Saturday 14 June.
These readings will be accompanied by a poetry reading from Bakita Kasadha, followed by a performance by the London Gay Men’s Chorus at 12.45pm and 4pm.
Tate Modern’s Karin Hindsbo said: “It’s an honour to show the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt in the Turbine Hall.
“This feels like an apt place for the public to see it.
“Tate Modern is all about exploring connections between the global and the local – in this case, connections between an international activist network and a local creative community, as well as connections between a global pandemic and the individual lives it has affected.
“The quilt is an incredible feat of creative human expression and I know our visitors will find it a deeply moving experience.”
The display will also be accompanied, from 12-15 June, by a showing of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (1995), a previously unseen documentary about the 1994 display of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt in Hyde Park Corner.
The documentary was directed by Peter Martin and produced by Martin Cohen, Zowie Broach, and Anna Powell.
Not publicly released at the time, it was made and presumed lost for 30 years.
For more information on the Quilt’s display, click here.
Feature Image provided by Tate
Join the discussion