The final installation of art to complete the AIDS Memorial Pathway between Cal Anderson Park and Capitol Hill Station will be marked with a ceremony Thursday night.
Organizers are inviting the community to gather with artist Horatio Hung-Yan Law as the fences come down and the Ribbon of Light sculpture is fully unveiled with remarks from the artist, Gay City, and the Office of Arts and Culture. The event will take place Thursday from 8 to 9 PM on the north end of Cal Anderson.
CHS reported here on the Ribbon work as a “quiet space for communal mourning and personal contemplation” as part of the AIDS Memorial Pathway connecting the park to The AMP Plaza and Capitol Hill Station.
Dedicated last summer, the pathway is now part of the City of Seattle’s art collection.
The pathway’s centerpiece rises in the Capitol Hill Station Plaza and elegantly incorporates a large block full of transit system utilities. Artist Christopher Paul Jordan’s andimgonna-misseverybody is a giant X made from speakers, a 20 foot by 20 foot structure, designed by the artist to represent X as a positive symbol turned on its axis to erode the perceived binary between HIV positive and HIV negative people and symbolizing a solidarity between the two.
The We’re Already Here installations from design firm Civilization, meanwhile, consist of bright signs bearing messages from “collective action” — protests, demonstrations, rallies, and campaigns — from the activism around the HIV/AIDS crisis.
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The whole project is, to me, a sad embarrassment, from the lolly-pop stickers, to the Goodwill speakers all glued together, to this, a meaningless squiggle of plastic in the dirt. When walking in the area, I avoid it altogether — not because it evokes unpleasant memories but precisely because it doesn’t. Anybody wishing to truly reflect on the gay holocaust would be well advised to visit the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco.
Pretty, but I hope it has some anti-graffiti texture otherwise just a big waste of money.
I went and checked it out. I’m concerned about how much tax dollars were put towards this. I appreciate the idea but as a gay man that survived the AIDS crisis the memorial didn’t even speak to me about that crisis. I went and the message was lost on me of what the point even was of the memorial. I think in 20 years it won’t age well and 99% of people will just think its “Seattle weird” public art. I was hoping for something more impactful that would have given a true sense of the tragedy the AIDS crisis was.