I Am Not Alone In This Way: Queer and Black in Contemporary Art

Sur, a Montreal native, never regretted his decision to move to New York, despite the hoops he was expected to jump through as a resident alien and identifiable queer Black male. He was able to create a world for himself within the field of contemporary art beginning in the early 1980s – a fly in the buttermilk of a predominantly white contemporary art world. 

“I hadn’t realized how segregated the art world was then, not was I expected to be a survivor of the AIDS pandemic that was then in full dress rehearsal.”

The onset and struggle around AIDS and its effect on the art world would manifest itself during his co-directorship of the Gracie Mansion Gallery, a prominent East Village gallery named after his partner Gracie Mansion, beginning in 1982. ACT-UP would form in 1987. In 1988 Sur’s activist stance would have him leave his gallery position to help take care of artist friends living with HIV/AIDS while beginning a mission to set up and advise on their Estates. In the mid-1990s he was invited to serve on the Board of Visual AIDS, wherein he helped organize exhibitions of artists affected by HIV/AIDS and assisting in the creation of the Visual AIDS Archive Project which would become the largest archive documenting the works of artists with HIV/AIDS in the world.

The lecture will take place in English

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