Le sida en mémoire (AIDS in memory)

Niki de Saint Phalle has made her work the site of many battles, including the fight against AIDS. In 1986, she published the book Le Sida, c'est facile à éviter (Aids, it's easy to avoid) with the doctor Silvio Barandun, translated into six languages. In the form of a letter to her children, she humorously set out to raise awareness of prevention and break the taboo of the disease: 70,000 copies were sold or distributed in schools, with the profits going to the AIDS association. The book was republished and supplemented with recent scientific advances in 1990.

She did not stop there, creating a stamp in Switzerland or a "Niki de Saint Phalle" condom pin, and even taking part, alongside Line Renaud, in one of the first Sidaction events on French television in 1990. At the very heart of her work, she fights HIV with her colourful obelisk sculptures in the shape of giant condoms, on which skulls and hearts bloom, studded with pieces of mirror. These works reflect the artist's joyful and lively outlook on life, even when dealing with a subject as devastating as AIDS.

Because HIV is still with us and because this unprecedented "political" epidemic marks a turning point in our contemporary history, the Abattoirs are inviting several personalities to talk about its genealogy and to recall how much and how artists have told the story.

Thus, through the eyes of Professor Patrice Massip, former head of the Service des Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales (SMIT) of the CHU Toulouse Purpan, of Thibault Boulvain, art historian, author of L'art en sida. 1981-1997, Joseph Situ, responsible for prevention and access to screening with the association AIDES and Jérôme Carrié, director of La Fabrique (Jean Jaurès University, Toulouse) and moderator of this meeting, we will understand the impact of the disease on the social, human, artistic and political field.