José Leonilson

Audio Commentary

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José Leonilson’s interest in textiles began at an early age, his father owned a textile warehouse and his grandmother, mother and sister all embroidered at home. He was deeply interested in the process of hand-embroidery, often writing text with thread as well as attaching objects to fabrics. The title of this work may be a reference to Rifat Ozbek, who won British Designer of the Year in the year in which this work was made, 1988. Ozbek’s fashion lines involved bright colours and tassels and encouraged a questionable brand of ‘ethnic chic’, borrowing styles from diverse cultural influences. It is possible that Leonilson is commenting on, or critiquing, Ozbek’s work by creating a work that forms the polar opposite – the fabric is black, the tassels are metal. Leonilson consumed a wide variety of visual information, from fashion to religious symbols, in order to create his own visual language. His interest in fashion is attested in his fanzine, Ideal Vogue (1976), which appears to critique the gaze of the fashion world.

Almeida e Dale

Rifat

As a progression from Rifat, Leonilson’s embroidery in this work becomes more introspective. Instead of metal affixations, the embroidery on this white sheet is made up of patches of text that take the form of journal entries alongside small embroidered doodles. Made in the year of his diagnosis with HIV, Leonilson is forced to take stock of his life and to turn his gaze upon himself. In the bottom corners he signs the work with his age, 34, and his initial. The work is filled with anxiety, indecision and desire but also a sense that Leonilson is attempting to pin down his emotions in the wake of his diagnosis, documenting how he feels. The fact that the text moves up the sides of the fabric creates a central emptiness, as though he is trying to give himself space in which to think.

Com as mãos no bolso; com as mãos abanando

Ernestro Briel

Ernesto Briel painted this work two years prior to his diagnosis with HIV in 1989, it is representative of a stylistic period of his career that began in New York City. In 1980 Briel emigrated from Cuba through the Mariel boatlift and settled in New York where he lived until his death in 1992. Briel began his artistic career by creating Op art in the 1960s, mastering the practice of intricate ink drawings; however, by the 1980s he began to move towards paintings that focused on geometric shapes, more opaque colours, and metallic elements. This work also focuses on the arrangement of geometric shapes and patterns, with a central amalgamation of mirrored shapes painted in gold and white. The brightness of the shades of gold, silver and white lend this work a refreshing feeling of levity – a feeling which is echoed by the title of the work.

New Age #1

In Briel’s work from the period after his diagnosis, there is an increased focus on duality and on connections and barriers between two parts. In Sacris presents two geometrical compositions side-by-side, they are structurally identical but the colours and patterns on the right-hand section are different. The sense of an unstable parallelism could refer to life and death, two versions of the self or two partners. The fading colours of the right-side hint at a fading vibrancy and a loss of clarity, a decline in health - a representation of the toll of the illness. The title refers to religious rites and sacrifice, lending the work an even more solemn atmosphere and pointing towards Briel’s acceptance of his prognosis. It is important to note that although Briel was a Catholic, he was not a religious man. However, he enjoyed the art and architecture of religious spaces.

In Sacris

Made in the last year of Briel’s life, The Guardian Angel shows a stark simplification from his work of the 1980s and is a far cry from his Op art of the 1960s - abandoning geometric complexity and fine ink detail. The straightforwardness of this work is a sign of the artist’s declining health and diminishing energy and the result is deeply moving. This work is made up of twenty-two small pink squares on a brown background, spaced out equally up this long and narrow canvas. The colours are soft and delicate, and the verticality of the canvas gives off the impression that the pink squares are in a kind of heavenly ascension. The title suits this reading and confirms the spirituality in the work, Briel could be referring to his partner, Jesús Selgas, who remained with him throughout his illness, as an expression of love and gratitude. It could also be a pre-emptive vision of the artist’s transition to an afterlife, an affirmation of Briel’s eternal presence within his work.

The Guardian Angel

Feliciano Centurión

These plates, made by Centurión from 1990 onwards, depict a variety of animals and red, blue and green floral decoration. This relation to the wild, natural world is a recurrent theme throughout Centurión’s work. It is a connection to his home and his upbringing in subtropical Paraguay, in the Misiones region.  At the heart of Centurión’s artistic creation was a desire to create beauty; these paper plates serve as an example of the reaches of this ambition. Even the most mundane, boring, ugly of household items was deserving of beautification. This represents Centurión’s connection to the Guaraní idea of tekoporã: a search for a good and beautiful life. This desire was central to all of his work and did not falter throughout his illness, he maintained a deep faith in the simplicity of beauty.

Cecilia Brunson Projects

El amor es el perfume de una flor (Love is a flower's perfume)

This work by Feliciano Centurión, made in the final year of his life, confronts the viewer with the stark contrast of its formal appearance and the solemnity of the embroidered caption. As a child, Centurión was surrounded by craft production and embroidery, however he was taught that sewing was for women and not men. Having left Paraguay and moved to Buenos Aires, he made a conscious to decision to engage in conventionally feminine craft practices in his art. References to sacrifice also recur in his work and connect to themes of canonisation and the suffering male body within religious tradition. The purest Christian concept of sacrifice entails suffering for the purpose of forgiveness of sins; for Centurión, the (direct or indirect) cause of his death was, in the eyes of the Church, a sin. Therefore, the association with sacrifice in his work is sinister, it is uncomfortable to conceive of his death as an absolution of sins because this necessitates the (harmful and incorrect) belief that HIV/AIDS is transmitted through acts of perceived sexual immorality. 

Vivir es Todo Sacrificio

This exhibition brings together works by Ernesto Briel, Feliciano Centurión and José Leonilson, three artists from Latin America who tragically died in the 1990s as a result of AIDS-related illnesses. This selection attempts to provide a basis for the consideration of the psychological and practical implications of diagnosis with HIV in the early 1990s at a time when prevention and treatment medications were less advanced and when the illness was surrounded by higher levels of stigma, misinformation and prejudicial attitudes. The title of this show, Lost Loss, aims to centre and acknowledge the grief and countless losses experienced in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of this illness both on the part of the artists themselves and their loved ones. However, the title also suggests that through an acknowledgement of the artists’ presence within the bodies of work left behind there may be the possibility for an alleviation of grief, or a loss of loss.

All three artists manifested deeply personal systems of belief which are apparent in their works, they borrow disparate religious and spiritual imagery and sentiments without necessarily subscribing to particular pre-existing models of faith. Their expressions of faith become deeply moving in the works made in the last years of their lives, mirroring the function of conventional religious beliefs in the way that they help people (and their loved ones) deal with grief and illness, providing comfort and often the prospect of life beyond death. Traversing a variety of media, the works in this show also explore alternative masculinities and the beauty of queer love. The selection attempts to reveal differences between works created pre and post-diagnosis in terms of the scale and material as well as the content.