Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: art and the Aids struggle

Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are three artists whose work reflects in different ways on the Aids crisis that has devastated communities across the world since the 1980s. Hujar, who died from Aids-related pneumonia in 1987, is the subject of a new show at Raven Row in London, the largest to date at a UK gallery. Host Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its curators, the writer John Douglas Millar, and the artist, master printer and model for some of Hujar’s photographs, Gary Schneider. The artist Gregg Bordowitz was a member of The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, founded in New York in the 1980s. Bordowitz has lived with HIV since the late 1980s, and it has fuelled his art and activism ever since, as a new show at Camden Art Centre in London demonstrates. We spoke to him about his life and work. And this episode’s Work of the Week is Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s Abiku (Born to Die) (1988), a photograph in The 80s: Photographing Britain, a show at Tate Britain in London. Fani-Kayode was a key figure in the UK’s burgeoning avant-garde photography scene in the late 1980s, but died in his early 30s in 1989 from complications relating to Aids. We talk to Jasmine Kaur Chohan, co-curator of the Tate Britain show, about the work.

Peter Hujar—Eyes Open in the Dark, Raven Row, London, 30 January-6 April

Gregg Bordowitz—There: a Feeling, Camden Art Centre, London, until 23 March

The 80s: Photographing Britain, Tate Britain, until 5 May

The Art Newspaper’s book The Year Ahead 2025, an authoritative guide to the year’s unmissable art exhibitions, museum openings and significant art events, is still available to buy at theartnewspaper.com for £14.99 or the equivalent in your currency. Buy it here.

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