Exclusive:AIDS quilt created by Scottish activist to go on show in Scotland for first time
The quilt has previously been on show at Tate Modern in London, where it was visited by more than 70,000 people.
A quilt created by a Scottish activist in memory of people who have died of AIDS is to be brought home to Scotland.
The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt will be free to visit at Tramway in Glasgow, where it will be on display for three weeks.
The item, which was created by Ally van Tillo in the 1980s after he visited the US, where a similar project was underway, consists of 42 quilts and 23 individual panels, representing over 384 individuals affected by HIV and AIDS.
The Tramway exhibition follows the display at the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, in London, in June, which was experienced by nearly 70,000 visitors over five days.
The Scottish exhibition will, like the Tate Modern, include scheduled readings of the names of those commemorated in the quilt.
A display of one piece of the quilt is also taking place this winter in Edinburgh, at the offices of Edinburgh Art Festival at the French Institute, following a torch lit procession with those involved on 1 December to commemorate World AIDS Day.
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Started in the USA in 1985 by activist Cleve Jones and known as the world’s largest community art project, the quilt concept commemorates friends, family and loved ones lost to AIDS. Individual panels were stitched together to create larger quilts, which were then shown outdoors as a form of protest to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS.
In the late 1980s, Scottish activist Ally Van Tillo, then known as Alastair Hume, visited San Francisco, where he witnessed an early display of the quilt. When Hume returned home to Edinburgh, he began coordinating the creation and display of a UK version, as many others did around the world.
The quilt was stitched in Leith during the 1980s and 1990s and then went into storage.
Seven UK HIV support charities formed the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership in 2014 to conserve and display the quilt.
While antiretroviral drugs have now made it possible to live with HIV, access to this medication still varies dramatically across the globe.
Van Tillo, activist and founder of The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, said the blocks for the UK quilt had been sewn together in Leith in the 1990s.
He said: “The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is coming home to Scotland. From 1989 and throughout the 90s, the quilt found a home in Leith. At the time, it was a resource for loss, bereavement and education.
“It helped people make sense of their loss, humanising the death of individuals that our government and media were painting as perverts and social pariahs. But its significance today is not just historical. Language used to ostracise gay people has not gone away, and the queer community is once again under threat.”
He added: “The AIDS Memorial Quilt is the world's biggest community art project. It is non-threatening and not overtly political. It has no religion, and does not judge. But that does not mean that its message is any less powerful. Queer history for the most part is lost, because so many individuals were living in shame and shadows. The AIDS Memorial Quilt is alive: let’s ensure no more of our history is allowed to disappear.”
Christopher Ward, national health improvement manager at Waverley Care, said: “The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt has deep roots in Scotland thanks to the vision of Ally Van Tillo, who helped create the UK Quilt during the early years of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s. The Quilt was an act of remembrance, activism, and protest to say that these lives mattered.”
The UK quilt will be exhibited alongside archival material which traces the Scottish roots of the project, as well as the documentary film There Is A Light That Never Goes Out from 12 - 27 September next year.
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