Keynote / The Body, the Host: A Symposium on HIV/AIDS, Christianity, and Art

This symposium, held in conjunction with the exhibition The Body, the Host: HIV/AIDS and Christianity, brings together artists, activists, and historians who expand conventional narratives around Christianity, HIV/AIDS, and their overlaps.

Friday, November 15

• 5:30-6:30 PM Dee Dee Ngozi Chamblee, keynote address
• 6:30-7:30 PM Reception

Saturday, November 16

• 10:30-11:00 AM Welcome and introductions
• 11:00-11:30 AM Jessica Beck
• 11:30 AM -12:00 PM Creighton Baxter
• Break
• 1:30-2:00 PM Performance: Brendan Fernandes and the Oberlin Dance Department
• 2:00-2:30 PM Peter Staley
• 2:30-3:00 PM Concluding discussion
• 3:00-4:00 PM Reception

Dee Dee Ngozi Chamblee is the executive director of La Gender Inc. She is a national leader in trans and HIV/AIDS advocacy and the co-founder of the trans ministry at her church.

Jessica Beck is a director at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills. She was a curator at the Andy Warhol Museum for eight years and is among the foremost scholars of Warhol’s life and work.

Creighton Baxter is a New York-based artist whose work in performance and drawing addresses temporality and remembrance.

Brendan Fernandes is a dancer, visual artist, and professor at Northwestern University. His choreographic projects in museums confront issues of race, queerness, migration, and protest.

Peter Staley (OC 1983) is the founder of TAG (the Treatment Action Group) and AIDSmeds.com and author of Never Silent: ACT UP and My Life in Activism.

This event takes place at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. It is free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored with the generous support of the Art History Department’s Baldwin Lectures Endowment, with additional support from the Dance Department.