‘Can You Save Superman?’ Exhibit Boldly Challenges the Gay Blood Ban
by David June 14, 2020 · Gay News / The Advocate
A bold new exhibit from New York-based artist Jordan Eagles and curated by Eric Shiner, the executive director of Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, challenges the decades-old policy that bars gay and bisexual men from donating blood in the time of COVID-19. The virtual exhibit that pointedly runs from World Blood Donor Day (June 14, 2020) through World AIDS Day (December 1, 2020) titled Can You Save Superman? investigates the line from the AIDS epidemic through to the current pandemic. It is presented by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, which amplifies queer art and artists.For the project, Eagles, who has “explored the aesthetics and ethics of blood as an artistic medium” since the late ’90s, according to his bio, incorporates found images from a 1971 Superman comic titled “Attack of the Micro-Murderer,” in which the Man of Steel is infected with a super-virus and the citizens of Metropolis rush to donate blood. In line with his exploration with blood, Eagles has splattered the pages of the comic book with the blood of a gay man on PrEP.
View the Can You Save Superman? virtual exhibit here.
American Carnage 6/14-III-IN-ACTION (detail)
201810 x 13″Blood of gay man on PrEP, digital printPhotograph by Kris Graves
Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Tracy E. Gilchrist
