ANDREA BOWERS ::::

The Weight of Relevance reveals the current state of the AIDS Memorial Quilt—the largest piece of folk art in the world—and of the people who maintain and display it, striving to strike a balance between preserving it and using it as an iconic activist tool. Combining footage of the quilt in storage with interviews of staff members, predominantly women, who maintain and house the quilt in Atlanta (originally stored in San Francisco by the NAMES Project Foundation), Bowers points to women’s roles as caretakers and activists. The quilt was originally created in San Francisco in 1987 to celebrate and memorialize the lives of those who have died of AIDS-related illnesses. In Continual Maintenance and Mending, images of the unfolded quilt and actual names are projected, to the sound of a sewing machine, as a seamstress makes repairs. The original goal of the quilt was to bring to consciousness the names of those avoided and ignored because they died from a disease that was stigmatized. Bower’s work reveals how these voices continue to be silenced as the demographics of the disease change and the quilt fades from the public eye. A testament to archival curiosity about the history of political activism and its visual language, the quilt highlights the influence art and politics have on each other.

Bowers has exhibited extensively in the US and abroad, with recent solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects; Secession in Vienna; REDCAT in Los Angeles; and Halle für Kunst in Lüneburg (Germany). She has participated in multiple group exhibitions. Bowers’ work is in many public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, MoMA in New York, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Los Angeles.