Masami Teraoka

These prints reference 19th-century Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world) woodblock prints, from the calligraphy within them to the fan-shaped design that unites them. These works, however, are from artist Masami Teraoka’s mid-1980s AIDS Series. References to that ongoing pandemic include condom wrappers and the man with the wasted physique. Comprising small-scale prints and large-scale paintings, the series began after Teraoka encountered a woman whose child was born with HIV. Rather than depicting the pandemic in the world around him, he transposed it onto an aesthetic tradition that existed prior to HIV/AIDS.