Clifford Prince King photographs portraits of young Black queer men. His use of warm lighting, delicate posing, and objects signifying Black and queer identity create immersive narratives. The artist, who received his diagnosis in 2017, refers to these beautification practices as self-care, emphasizing their necessity, particularly for people who routinely experience discrimination.

This scene demonstrates the subtle joys of being able to depend on others. Safe spaces, where people can trust they won’t be discriminated against, are acts of resistance, and for HIV-positive folks, they can be a health measure: some studies have found connections between loneliness and increased symptoms and pain from HIV.

Safe Space depicts a room where three men break from rigid expectations of masculinity. While tasks like braiding hair could be performed alone, it is often a service from one to another—and one that requires trust. As the man sitting on the floor gets his hair braided, he reads James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956), a novel about David, an engaged, straight-presenting man who rediscovers his bisexuality because he sleeps with Giovanni, a gay bartender in a windowless Parisian bedroom. The hair product has made the stylist’s hands messy, so the third subject, laying on the bed, assists him in smoking. When facing hardships, masculinity sometimes pushes men to be “brave” on their own, but everyone, including those with HIV, deserve someone(s) to help look after them.

Activist and playwright Larry Kramer is sometimes remembered for ballistic confrontations and explicit vocabulary against the “despondent” institutions that watched a plague devour the world. He started and left both the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC; founded in 1982, left the following year) and ACT UP (founded in 1987, left in 1990). He received his own HIV diagnosis in 1988.

Kramer created the organizations because he saw power in numbers. His public berating of politicians made it nearly impossible to ignore the HIV-positive community. In this portrait, one of more than 600 Robert Giard made of gay and lesbian writers, Kramer’s sweatshirt features ACT UP’s provocative slogan “SILENCE=DEATH,“ complete with the pink triangle, a reference to the badges Nazi concentration camps forced gay men to wear.

Both GMHC and ACT UP are still active. ACT UP is a direct-action group aimed at combating an alleged indifference toward AIDS by other activists, the public, and the government. Their heavy-handed approach—which included demonstrations at Wall Street and shutting down the FDA for a day—was successful: ACT UP is credited with lowering drug costs and changing public perception and health policies in the United States.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres asks the viewer to create their own narratives with his series of Untitled works. In this work, two toys—Snoopy (from Charlie Brown) and Bamm-Bamm Rubble (from the Flintstones)—lie together in a white bed, at first glance seemingly innocent. Gonzalez-Torres is an artist who often discusses loss, grief, and political violence, and the white bed becomes a signifier the viewer is left to decode.

After Gonzalez-Torres’s partner, Ross Laycock, died from complications of HIV/AIDS, the artist started to collect discarded small rubber and plastic toys from flea markets. Grief over a loved one can feel like an insatiable void begging to be filled. The artist spoke about the collection in a 1994 issue of Artforum: “I thought, Well, if I get more, perhaps I’ll get happier. Then they became an obsession. Last time I counted I had 1,500.” Is this work a portrait depicting the artist’s grief through rigid plastic that is unable to respond to the world, or is it a portrait of two lovers in bed, happily together and cozy?

Feliciano Centurión was born in Paraguay under the Stroessner dictatorship. After moving to Buenos Aires (a way to expand artistic opportunities), Centurión joined El Rojas, a revolutionary group of artists who centered self-expression and kitsch. In El Rojas, Centurión could be openly queer, and his works integrated his needlework skills—a traditionally feminine technique—to emphasize queer aesthetics. His designs featured painted imagery of flora and fauna and short phrases or single words embroidered on pillowcases, aprons, and patterned blankets purchased at inexpensive markets.

As he faced HIV complications, the artist’s works became smaller, and he used phrases that emphasized his declining health. Estoy Vivo (Spanish for “I am alive”) was created two years before Centurión’s death. Who is he speaking to? Is he pleading for his existence as an HIV-positive person to be recognized? Or is he proudly declaring that, as someone who is dying from a disease, he is living and still creating?