The News Lens
Date: 2019/11/26
By: Yu-chen Lai  

HIV/AIDS has been treated like the plague, a punishment sent by god. A group exhibition at Taipei's Museum of Contemporary Art has attempted to provide various "prescriptions" for this epidemic.

Just north of Taipei Main Station, a black mannequin stands in an open plaza. Emerging from torrents of white medicine bottles, the mannequin wears sheets of white plastic threads that cling to its body like a second skin. Next to it, a red cargo container with portraits dimly-lit inside; the other end, a giant screen that plays two astronauts, dry-fucking in space suits.

Titled “Interminable Prescriptions for the Plague,” this art show opened in early October and is now on view for free at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.

The “Plague” in question is HIV/AIDS — perhaps the only permissible instance to invoke the epidemic that haunts our memories of a specific time and place.

However, as a show that brings together 17 artworks from 20 artists, Interminable disposes of the notion of a generation lost or a community devastated. The show presents individuals practicing vastly different lives somehow gathered here, whose works all simply happen to contain, entertain — indeed, host the polemic of HIV/AIDS.    [FULL  STORY]