Virologic Assault Collection

Monday 1 December 2025

TLDR

• 30 abstract works made for World AIDS Day 2025, using clashing Rothko-inspired colour fields to make visible the biological assault that continues beneath pharmaceutical control

• Structured across five thematic series, these works challenge the reality beneath the medical success story

• Drawn from my lived HIV advocacy experience, this collection maps the contemporary lived reality of HIV within a perpetual viraemic siege.

Virologic Assault is a collection of 30 abstract works made for World AIDS Day 2025. I created them using Holbein acrylic gouache and black pen, working in the tradition of Rothko's colour field practice: large areas of clashing, unresolved colour doing the work that representation can't.

The public story of HIV in 2025 is one of medical success, with a comfortable narrative that pharmaceuticals have made HIV a non-issue. As an artist living with HIV, this collection speaks to a reality that story leaves out. The viral assault beneath the medical success story. Living under siege. Every day. An undetectable viral load does not mean the body is at peace. The cellular warfare continues beneath it. This collection is an attempt to make that ongoing assault visible through colour, form, and abstraction.

The 30 works are structured across five thematic series. Invisible Burden maps the daily ritual of pharmaceutical survival. Somatic Recall explores how the body holds the memory of viral invasion long after viral loads drop. Chronicity sits with the psychological weight of forever: lifetime pharmaceutical dependence rendered in colour field and geometric repetition. Liminal inhabits the unstable threshold between sick and well that contemporary HIV occupies. Chronic Reconciliation closes the collection with what I'd describe as hard-won coherence rather than peace. Virologic Assault occupies a nuanced ground of contemporary chronic illness: the ongoing biological negotiation, cellular adaptation, and unexpected beauty found within a perpetual viraemic siege.

One thread running through the collection that felt significant to me is inflamaging: the intersection of HIV-related inflammation and the ageing process. More than half of people living with HIV are now over fifty. The medical challenge of distinguishing HIV-related inflammation from natural ageing is genuinely contemporary, unresolved, and almost never part of the public conversation about HIV.

I bring over 10 years lived experience in HIV advocacy to this collection, approaching a subject the art world still tends to approach from the outside. I hope this collection offers something to people living with HIV who recognise the gap between the medical narrative and their own daily experience. For everyone else, I hope it opens a window into a reality that is all too easy to overlook.

30 pieces. Minted on objkt.com. Launched World AIDS Day, December 1, 2025.

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