Luis Cruz Azaceta, AIDS Count III, 1988. Acrylic on canvas, 77 x 117 inches.
Luis Cruz Azaceta is included in the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans’ 2021 open-call summer exhibition, titled Behind Every Beautiful Thing: Encountering Bodies, Wrestling the Human Condition.
Featuring multimedia artworks from 36 artists based in the Gulf South, this exhibition offers a deeply personal portrayal of artists’ experiences with health and illness, and the reverberating impact on the life, body, and psyche of the individual and their community. The works on view reflect the heightened visibility of health inequity throughout the nation as a result of the pandemic and our increasingly-elevated concerns about mental and physical wellness and disability. Azaceta is represented by two works made over thirty years apart, both responding to major health crises of their respective dates. His 1988 painting AIDS Count III is part of a larger series from the mid-1980s created in response to the inescapable presence of the AIDS Epidemic in New York at the time, while his painting COVID MUTATION 444 is part of an ongoing series began just last year while in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The exhibition is on view at CACNO from July 31 through September 26, 2021.