The AIDS Bottle Project is an interactive artist’s action conceived as a means of focusing attention on the AIDS crisis. From 1990 – 2000, in sites all over the United States and Europe, the ICI displayed bottles on December 1st of each year in conjunction with World AIDS Day.
Each bottle represents a person who has died from complications due to AIDS or HIV. The name and year of death is etched on the glass and a short biography is printed under the lid. In public displays, the bottles were part of an interactive process. Jars were left open so that objects of personal significance could be added to them by visitors. Response books were also available to record a range of emotions. At the end of the display, the bottles were distributed to the public free of charge. The jars were offered not only to remember those who had died, but to emphasize the individual make-up of a community and the responsibility of each living member to resist complacency about the ongoing epidemic.
| AIDS Bottle Project Exhibition History | |
| 1999 | Over 1,000,000/under 24 at Sam Francis Gallery, Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, Santa Monica |
| 1998 | Displayed at Santa Monica Festival, Santa Monica 100 Unknown Women at The Institute of Cultural Inquiry |
| 1994 |
Workshop and display at Johnson State College, Vermont Lecture and display at Montgomery Museum of Art, Alabama Displayed at Midnight Special Bookstore , Santa Monica, CA. |
| 1993 | Display and lecture at Williams College, Massachusetts City University of New York, New York City |
| 1992 | Displayed at Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, SITE, Los Angeles SPACE Gallery, Los Angeles Watts Towers, Los Angeles Birchfield Art Center, Buffalo, NY University of California, Santa Barbara |
| 1991 | Displayed at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA L.A. Eyeworks, Los Angeles Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Grey Art Gallery, NYU, New York City Washington D.C. Mall Karl Bornstein Gallery, Santa Monica Los Angeles Municipal Gallery |
| 1990 | Tactical intervention at Los Angeles County Museum of Art Also shown at Richard Bennett Gallery, Los Angeles |
| 1989 | Visual AIDS launches Day Without Art on December 1 to coincide with World AIDS Day. The day of action and commemoration rallied artists and arts communities to remember those who have died from AIDS related illnesses. |
