Marc thought that perhaps they could fold a ribbon and pin it on their lapels. Marc Happel thought that Visual AIDS could do something similar, to acknowledge the war at home. Marc had been taking trips driving around upstate New York, where he had seen yellow ribbons tied around trees, in honor of servicemen. This was at the time of the Persian Gulf War. Happel had heard about the group’s search for a symbol, and he had an idea. A costume designer named Marc Happel got invited to a meeting of the Visual AIDS artist caucus. It all started one night in the spring of 1991. A little concept that, at the time, was very novel: The AIDS awareness ribbon. But of all the work the group did, they made their biggest impact with a simple little symbol. Visual AIDS held public events and organized gallery shows to raise AIDS awareness. “Electric Blanket,” a project of Visual AIDS in 1990. In 1988 they began calling their collective Visual AIDS. O’Connell and other artists banded together and started making art in response to AIDS. New York artist Patrick O’Connell would spend days visiting friends in the hospital, going to funerals, and coming home to a panicked answering machine message from friends who just learned they were sick. A group of artists in Manhattan decided to change that. AIDS became the number one killer of young men in New York City, then of young men in the country, then of young men and women in the country.ĭespite the gravity of the AIDS crisis, in the late 1980s, there was little public acknowledgment of AIDS. By the late 1980s, AIDS had been in the United States for almost a decade.
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