Welcome to the 3rd Annual POZ Awards, which spotlight the best representations of HIV/AIDS in media and culture.
The POZ editorial staff selects the nominees, but POZ readers choose the winners.
Eligible nominees were active or were presented, published or produced between October 1, 2017, and September 30, 2018.
Be sure to vote for your favorite nominees by the World AIDS Day deadline: Saturday, December 1, 2018. DEADLINE EXTENDED: Saturday, December 8!
Here are the nominees:
Broadway Bares (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS)
As long as Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS produces this annual, spectacular night of nearly naked Broadway professionals strutting their attractively toned stuff, we will probably nominate it in this category. It’s just too irresistible. So there.
In this Visual AIDS exhibit, curated by Kyle Croft and Asher Mones, two dozen artists and performers “unpack the metaphors and assumptions that enable the punishment and incarceration of people living with HIV, presenting nuanced analyses and conceptual refigurings as well as sardonic humor and imaginative revisions.” The exhibit takes on the criminal justice system as well as health systems that are complicit in the surveillance and incarceration of people living with HIV.
History Keeps Me Awake at Night (Whitney Museum)
The unapologetically queer and HIV-positive artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) did not limit himself to one signature style or medium. He explored them all, producing an enormous body of work spanning photography, painting, music, film, sculpture, writing, and activism. Wojnarowicz, who was 37 when he died from AIDS-related complications, wrote: “To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific ramifications.”
Lazarus Syndrome (SNAP Productions)
Powerful theatrical experiences are not limited to the streets of Broadway. And, when they are the product of a playwright and long-term HIV survivor like Bruce Ward, they can be downright transformative. This year, audiences in Omaha, Nebraska, were treated to the autobiographical story of a decades-long HIV survivor being helped out of his depression by family and friends. The production was intimate, funny, hopeful, and bore the authenticity that could only come from Ward’s lived experience.
VOTING IS NOW CLOSED!
