TRP... world aids day

The Rainbow Project marked this year’s World AIDS Day with an exhibition at the MAC of a small collection AIDS memorial quilts from Northern Ireland. These are quilts were made by family members, friends and partners to celebrate and remember their loved ones who lost their lives due to AIDS related illnesses.

AIDS memorial quilts, otherwise known as ‘The Names Project’, were initially conceived by American LGBTQIA+ rights activist Cleve Jones. Cleve initially started his activism journey in the 1970s after befriending gay rights pioneer and politician Harvey Milk, eventually becoming his intern before Milk’s assassination in 1978. In 1985, as the AIDS epidemic death toll rose exponentially, Cleve encouraged attendees at the annual candlelight march in remembrance of Milk to write the names of loved ones lost to AIDs related causes on signs. These signs, taped together on the San Francisco Federal Building, looked to Cleve like a patchwork quilt, causing the initial lightbulb moment which led to the AIDS memorial quilts.

Jones had fond early memories of being comforted by being draped in a quilt his great-grandmother had made for him. He later said of the quilts, “[It is] a perfect symbol…a warm comforting, middle-class, middle-American, traditional-family-values symbol to attach to this disease that’s killing homosexuals and maybe, just maybe, we could apply those traditional family values to my family”.

What followed was what is considered to be the world’s largest community folk-art project, with panels being made in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa and beyond. Over fifty thousand panels were created worldwide, with over thirteen thousand originating from the United Kingdom and just twenty from Ireland. Within our collection, displayed this year in recognition of World AIDS Day, we had just fourteen from Northern Ireland. But despite its smaller scale, this exhibit was no less poignant or remarkable.

These quilts were recently re-discovered within a storeroom of ACET (AIDS Care Education & Training) in the Republic of Ireland, who kindly returned them to their home in Northern Ireland and with The Rainbow Project. Due to one of the quilts not being dedicated to anyone in particular but rather to mark World AIDS Day 1996, we believe that this is likely when they were last exhibited to the public. However, many noted that the last exhibition they’d remembered was in 1991 at the Ulster Hall.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much information on the individuals to whom the quilts were dedicated to or who made them. Of the fourteen quilts on display, just two had the individual’s full name attached. The stigma towards those who were impacted by HIV & AIDS was so viciously cruel and pervasive that many of those creating a memorial quilt felt unable to attach specific details that would have identified the individual who’d passed away or their remaining loved ones. Often, it was the desire of the deceased’s family or even sometimes the individual’s desire themselves that their HIV status remained unknown. But despite being unable to provide much, if any, detail on the specific quilts within our small collection, we decided that they should be exhibited regardless. We can still remember and celebrate those individuals whose lives lost to AIDS related illnesses, even without knowing their names or much about their lives. We can still come together as a community to remember and recognise the AIDS epidemic and its impact. In the remembering lies healing: healing from the often-unspoken grief, from the fearful panic of the yet unknown scope of the epidemic, from the deep-seated guilt or shame that arose from the homophobic and stigmatizing rhetoric around HIV/AIDS.

We would never have expected that we could reunite someone with a quilt they’d made for a lost loved one. But just days before our exhibition, we received word that we were displaying what was once considered a long-lost quilt created anonymously to remember Ruth Laffin. The quilt, simply dedicated “To Mummy”, was last seen by her eldest daughter when she’d made it and had it exhibited alongside others within ‘The Names Project N.I’ in the Ulster

Hall in 1991. Ruth was just thirty-six years old when she passed away due to AIDS related illnesses.

Michelle Laffin, the oldest of the Ruth’s five children, had taken responsibility for constructing the quilt in memory of her mother. The quilt was made of her mother’s favourite dress, duvet and the children’s duvet. At the time, due to stigma towards individuals and their families affected by HIV/AIDS, they couldn’t write their own names or their mother’s name on the quilt. Instead, Michelle asked her siblings to write their names and messages to their late mother underneath the quilt’s red hearts fashioned from her mother’s dress. Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster just before the exhibition, Michelle said “It has brought up an awful lot of emotions…but it does give me a sense of closure, and the fact that I want her name to be known and I’ve got the opportunity to do that now…before we couldn’t do that, we weren’t allowed to tell people.” It’s such an honour and a privilege to have been able to reunite Ruth’s family with the quilt so lovingly made for her – one we sincerely hope we’ll be able to replicate with others if we continue to exhibit these quilts going forward.

You may ask yourself, are these quilts still relevant today? After all, HIV is no longer an inevitable death sentence. If you were diagnosed as living with HIV today, you’d have roughly the same life expectancy as someone who is HIV Negative. HIV today is now a long-term but manageable condition, which shouldn’t stop you from living a healthy and full life. 97% of people living with HIV in Northern Ireland are ‘Undetectable’, meaning that because they’re on effective treatment their HIV has been so suppressed that they’re unable to transmit it onto anyone else by any means. With effective treatment of HIV and the availability of PEP (a medication that, if taken within seventy-two hours of high risk unprotected sex, can dramatically reduce your risk of contracting HIV) and PrEP (a medication that, if taken regularly as directed, can maximize your protection against HIV) it is achievable that we could end new HIV transmissions in Northern Ireland by 2030.

But whilst we live in the golden-era of prevention and treatment of HIV, we must never forget the lives lost due to inaction on the AIDS epidemic. We must recommit to ensuring that those living with HIV are supported and that the impact of stigma is steadily eliminated. We must take meaningful steps to reduce new HIV transmissions to zero. And we must ensure that the homophobia and transphobia of Governments around the world, demonstrated so clearly through their inaction on the AIDS epidemic, can never be repeated.

The Rainbow Project 23-31 Waring Street Belfast BT1 2DX www.rainbow-project.org