AIDS and the Politics of Remembrance

More Americans have been lost to AIDS than in all the U.S. wars since 1900. Yet few know about the National AIDS Memorial Grove, a seven-acre sanctuary hidden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and a testament to lives lost at a time when the stigma of AIDS forced many to grieve in silence. THE GROVE shows how a community in crisis found healing and remembrance, and how the seeds of a few visionary environmentalists blossomed into something larger than they could have imagined.

But the fight to remember takes on an unexpected dimension when stakeholders of the Grove seek broader public recognition through an international design competition, and a heated debate ensues about what constitutes an appropriate memorial for the AIDS pandemic. Thirty years after the first diagnosed cases of AIDS, how do we mark a time of unimaginable loss? And what does it mean to be a national memorial?

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A heartrending work that provokes questions about the narrative of history and the intentions of memorials.

The Independent Weekly