The 153 posters from 44 countries included in the just-opened Museum of Design Atlanta exhibit "Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Posters" show a world of responses to a singular affliction.
Some are somber, some are scary, some are humorous. Some are driven by sophisticated graphics with only a handful of words, while others tell detailed stories by the dozen. Some appear like handmade folk art, others polished and painterly. Some target prevention while others fight discrimination.
Elizabeth Resnick and Javier Cortés culled the works for this touring Massachusetts College of Art and Design exhibit from the 3,500-piece collection of James Lapides, owner of Boston's International Poster Gallery. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution caught up with the curators Sunday while they were in Atlanta for a gallery talk.
Q: It seems to be a sobering show, if you think about the three decades of loss to AIDS and the ongoing struggle to educate about the disease. Yet some of the posters are inspiring and even funny. Is it odd to have such differing emotions?
Resnick: I think that's fabulous; you became a participant in the experience itself. From my point of view, the reason why this particular exhibition came about was not really so much about AIDS. But AIDS was used as a subject in which one could show a variety of different visual language strategies used by people around the world in communicating a single message. Clearly we come at this as graphic designers, not as AIDS researchers.
Cortés: What we wanted to show was the different ways different cultures portrayed this message of prevention and awareness of AIDS. And what you experienced was what some of the designers of posters were aiming for. It's a disease that has affected every country on every continent. So it's a critically important message from a social perspective to help people have the information they need to protect themselves. Some designers use humor as a way to take subjects that might be scary or off-putting because what it deals with as a way to make it less scary and more accessible, whereas other cultures use fear to hopefully inspire people to protect themselves. And then there's a whole range in between.
Q: It seems that one has to let go of our Westernized perspective and realize that the individual posters only succeed if they speak successfully to the specific culture for which they're intended, right?
Resnick: Each culture has symbols, colors, images, pictorials that speak directly to its individual constituency. So a successful designer in Kenya emulating Western graphics will not be successful if he or she is trying to speak to people who are living in the bush. That's the beauty of communication: It's to get the message across to those intended for the message. That's the basis of what good design should do around the world.
Q: It's interesting to see in this 4G world, that a simple printed poster, which is a comparatively low-tech form of communication, can still speak effectively.
Resnick: I think the poster as a form is an effective tool, whether it's actually printed and put on the street in a more low-tech variety or whether it's put out on the Internet the moment it's finished and someone in Russia sees it three seconds later. It's a potent tool and the same kind of cultural and visual vernacular goes into making these posters no matter what media delivery we use to get those messages out.
Cortés: It's still a poster.
On view
"Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Posters"
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays (until 8 p.m. Thursdays), noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Through Jan. 1. $10; $8 seniors and military; $5 students and ages 5 and older. 1315 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-979-6455, www.museumofdesign.org.
Also on view: portions of the AIDS Memorial Quilt (changing monthly) and “The Opulent Object in Wood, Metal and Fiber: Richard Mafong, Mike Harrison and Jon Riis.”
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