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Katherine Cheairs

@kat_cheairs

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Community Artist: Curator: Filmmaker: Educator: Writer
Black Hole & Deep Sea Creature Enthusiast🐙
Email: [email protected]

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So proud to have helped rewrite and update this historic 1998 @visual_aids poster to reflect today’s realities in HIV funding, prevention, education and treatment.❤️ Swipe to see the full revised project! Repost from @visual_aids
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For Day With(out) Art 2026, Visual AIDS revisits our 1998 poster AIDS IS OVER, RIGHT? (OR, MAYBE YOU SHOULD READ THE FINE PRINT) at a moment of renewed crisis.

In the United States, HIV prevention, tracking, and research programs have been gutted, while cuts to U.S. funding are disrupting HIV treatment and services around the world. The consequences will unfold over years: preventable illness and death that may happen too slowly to make headlines, but are no less devastating. At a time when HIV and AIDS are being pushed out of public view, we are asking cultural institutions to help interrupt that disappearance.

We invite individuals and cultural organizations to display the poster on and around December 1, World AIDS Day, as part of Day With(out) Art, a global day of action and mourning in response to the heightening HIV and AIDS crisis.

This 24 × 36-inch poster is available for $10 to the general public, or free of charge to museums, galleries, universities, arts organizations, and other cultural institutions participating in Day With(out) Art 2026.

Available now at the link in bio.

Special thanks to board member Mark Quigley (@markquimark) for initiating this project and developing the text in collaboration with Nayland Blake, Marguerite Van Cook, Katherine Cheairs, and Visual AIDS staff.

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We’re excited to share that Reverend Joyce McDonald’s oral history with Katherine Cheairs is online and in print in the Summer 2026 issue of BOMB magazine. Read the interview using the link in our bio, or by purchasing a copy of @bombmag.

McDonald’s solo exhibition at Gordon Robichaux in New York is on view through June 21st, and Maureen Paley will present a group of the artist’s works as part of the Kabinett sector at Art Basel this week.

#ReverendJoyceMcDonald @joyketa @maureenpaley #GordonRobichaux @kat_cheairs @visual_aids

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Este año no fue lo mismo sin bailar esta cancióncita en el “dance floor” con estas lindas Tropicoquetas que tanto se extrañan.

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The exhibition ‘Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald’ at @bronxmuseum has been receiving high praise - including from writer Alexandra M. Thomas in this beautiful review for @hyperallergic!

Intrigued? Dive deeper into the exhibition this Saturday, November 1 at 3PM with a free panel discussion at the Museum featuring:

➡️ Kyle Croft, ‘Ministry’ Curator & @visual_aids Executive Director

➡️ Chloe Hayward, @studiomuseum Director of Education

➡️ @kat_cheairs, Artist & @visual_aids Board Member

Learn more & RSVP via the link in @bronxmuseum’s bio!

Pictured: 1 & 2. Press clips of @hyperallergic review of ‘Ministry’ 3. ‘Ministry’ Panel Graphic 4. Archival image of Reverend Joyce McDonald courtesy of the artist and @visual_aids

#BronxMuseum #ReverendJoyceMcDonald #Hyperallergic #VisualAIDS

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Installation views from Viral Intimacies, on view until 16 November 2025 🩶✨ 𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦

Viral Intimacies brings together artists, activists, and scholars to reflect on how HIV/AIDS has been shaped by politics, biomedicine, social contexts, as well as personal memories, love, and archives.

The exhibition centers the lived realities of those long marginalized in the histories of HIV/AIDS — trans and cis women, people from the Global South, racialized communities, incarcerated people, and sex workers.

Through eleven audiovisual works, Viral Intimacies seeks to decolonize the past and present of HIV/AIDS, filling the silences within dominant narratives.As the show enters its final weeks, we invite visitors to experience the works in person and spend time with the atmosphere they create.

Scenography by Nancy Naser Al Deen & Sina Ahmadi
Design by Karan Kobel
Education & Outreach by Madi Awadalla, Pascale Espinosa & Christina Harles @christina.harles
Pictures: Laura Fiorio @laurafioriop

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Impressions from the opening of 🩶✨ 𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦, as part of Berlin Art Week @berlinartweek

Come visit the current Exhibition at nGbK! 🩶✨ 𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦 can be seen Tue-Thu from 12am to 6pm and Fri-Sun from 12am to 8pm until 16 November.

VIRAL INTIMACIES brings together artists, activists and scholars to reﬂect on contemporary conditions of HIV/AIDS, as they are shaped by politics, biomedicine, social locations as well as personal memories, love and archives. The project foregrounds the realities of those who long have been silenced or forgotten in writing the history of HIV/AIDS: trans and cis women, people from the Global South, racialized people, incarcerated people and sex workers. VIRAL INTIMACIES asks how to decolonize the history and present of HIV/AIDS. Eleven audiovisual artworks fill the gaps in the dominant yet incomplete narrative of HIV/AIDS and narrate HIV/AIDS as a fragmented and uneven story. The accompanying public program creates a shared space for in depth conversation, encounters, visibilities and solidarity through ﬁlm screenings, talks, workshops and performances.

Artists: Camilo Acosta & Santiago Lemus, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Jorge Bordello, Kat Cheairs, Naya de Souza, Pascale Espinosa, Ato Kwamina Hasford, Kia LaBeija, Ivan L. Munuera, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Hanna Schaich, Manuela Solano

nGbK work group: Ahmed Awadalla (Madi), Tomás Espinosa, Elisabeth Krämer, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Hanna Schaich, Max Schnepf

Photo Credits: Laura Fiorio @laurafioriop

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🩶✨ 𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦

Exhibition catalogue VIRAL INTIMACIES 🩶✨
reflections on intimacy, care, and collective resilience

Inside you’ll find:
Hanna Schaich in conversation with Kat Cheairs — “The meaning of HIV is not dead!”
Madi Awadalla — What the Virus Saw: Touch, Borders, and Other Infections
Santiago Lemus & Camilo Acosta — Manifiesto Amarillo / Yellow Manifesto (2023)
Samuel Perea-Díaz in conversation with Benny Nemer — Intimate Ancestries
Max Schnepf — Forever and You: PrEP and HIV’s Archive of Feelings
Curatorial Statement, work descriptions and artist’s biographies

Edited by Madi Awadalla, Pascale Espinosa, Elisabeth Krämer, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Hanna Schaich, and Max Schnepf (Lead Editor)
Design by Karan Kobel
Copyediting by Savannah Turner

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Wonderful to have such a great Visual AIDS family group in attendance for the artist-led walkthrough of Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald! I stole the first image from @lauraberthlima - I hope you don’t mind! #reverendjoycemcdonald #bronxmuseum #visualaids

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Many congrats to Joyce McDonald, @bronxmuseum, and @visual_aids on a stunning, moving exhibition — on view until January 11th.

Curated by: #KyleCroft

#JoyceMcdonald #BronxMuseum #VisualAIDS #Art #FineArt

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Going orange 🍊 in Paris, Berlin, Leipzig and soon Milan with so many new and familiar faces lighting up the sky 🎇 ! My new video The Death Drive a chainsaw that shows no mercy is out this November @tempestagallery 🪚Thank you to all the teams behind Viral Intimacies @ngbk_berlin, The Will to Change @halle_14 and The Deluge @flutgrabenberlin 🧡🪴🕊️🌄🦚 keep making magic and spreading love 🪄
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#egalité #liberté #growth #lovers #deutschlandimherbst #movement #forward #rooster #ngbk #halle14 #magician #makeover

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Workshop: On Poetry, Memory and Loss 🩶✨ 𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦

📆 Friday, 12 Sept 2025, 5 PM
📍 nGbK, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 11/13
❗Limited capacity, please register via email: anmeldung@ngbk.de
🗣️ English

This workshop invites participants to view the video “Voices at the Gate”, followed by a close reading of texts published by women at the intersection of incarceration and HIV/AIDS. We will reflect on what emerges from these readings, have an opportunity for silent writing and/or drawing time, and share our insights from our time together.

“Voices at the Gate” is a video work commissioned initially by Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2021. Recorded minutes from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Upstate New York, Voices is a meditation on the intersection of HIV/AIDS activism, carcerality, landscapes, memory, being, belonging, and community care. Visitors are invited to witness, touch, and add to the natural materials on the altar excavated from sites near Berlin connected to histories of enclosure, containment, and incarceration.

Katherine “Kat” Cheairs is an interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator, curator, educator, and researcher. Kat founded the Makeda School for Art, Media, and Humanities, an alternative educational and speculative learning space drawing from progressive education and Black feminist instructional pedagogies. Kat frequently collaborates on archival and video-based projects that intersect with AIDS, art, and activism. Kat is pursuing a doctorate in art and art education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Their research focuses on Black women art educators’ pedagogy and practice through the lens of Black feminist onto-epistemology, Black studies, feminist pedagogy, queer theory, and affect studies. Kat serves on the board of Visual AIDS. Kat has presented on panels at the Tribeca Film Institute, Pratt Institute, The New School, NYU, Vassar College, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Poster House, BAM, The Aperture Foundation, Whitney Museum of American Art, and UnionDocs.

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𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦 🩶✨ Opening of the exhibition

📆 Wednesday, 10 Sept 2025, 6 PM
📍 nGbK, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 11/13

𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦 launches with an evening of performances: „In Why Are You So Negative?“, Naya de Souza (aka Bundaskanzlerin) delivers a sharp critique of German politics and society, while the performance duo Los Amarillos (Santiago Lemus and Camilo Acosta) highlights global inequalities in access to HIV medication. Federica Dauri’s long-durational performance LIMEN takes place in a sculptural environment of barbed wire, turning the body’s encounter with fragile openings into a site of risk, transformation, and reflection which evokes a suspended threshold where vulnerability, courage, and relationally coexist, inviting viewers to linger and reflect.
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𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗔𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦 startet mit einem Abend der Performances: In „In Why Are You So Negative?“ bringt Naya de Souza (alias Bundaskanzlerin) eine scharfe Kritik der deutschen Politik und Gesellschaft vor, während das Performance-Duo Los Amarillos (Santiago Lemus und Camilo Acosta) den weltweit ungleichen Zugang zu HIV-Medikamenten thematisiert.Federica Dauris Langzeit-Performance LIMEN entfaltet sich in einer skulpturalen Umgebung aus Stacheldraht. Die Begegnung des Körpers mit fragilen Öffnungen wird dabei zu einem Ort des Risikos, der Transformation und Reflexion dadurch entsteht ein schwebender Schwellenraum, in dem Verletzlichkeit, Mut und In-Beziehung-Sein koexistieren.

Künstler_innen/Artists: Camilo Acosta & Santiago Lemus, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Jorge Bordello, Kat Cheairs, Naya de Souza, Pascale Espinosa, Ato Kwamina Hasford, Kia LaBeija, Ivan L. Munuera, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Hanna Schaich, Manuela Solano

nGbk work group/nGbK-Arbeitsgruppe: Ahmed Awadalla (Madi), Pascale Espinosa, Elisabeth Krämer, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Hanna Schaich, Max Schnepf

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