Shan Kelley, 'Clean, fit, and decease free', Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture, Edmonton, Dec. 4, 2015 to Jan. 16, 2016

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I admit my guilt. Under Canada’s justice system, I am no better than a serious criminal offender. Last month, feeling under the weather and thinking it might be the flu, I picked up laundry from my mother’s seniors’ home. A warning about passing infections to a vulnerable population is posted at the door. I still feel guilty, even though it didn’t turn out to be the flu.

But for Montreal-based artist Shan Kelley, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2009, mere guilt won’t suffice. Even with viral loads so low that the risk of passing the infection is zero to negligible, failure to disclose his status to sexual partners could mean a charge of aggravated sexual assault, lengthy prison time and inclusion on the Sexual Offender Registry – even without transmission.

Kelley, who earned a BFA from Concordia University in 2011, serves on the board of the Canadian Treatment Action Council, a non-governmental organization that works to strengthen treatment and support for people living with HIV. His art is a powerful tool for intimate, self-revealing activism. 

At first glance, Kelley’s show may seem incoherent: a disconcerting assembly of mixed media that includes video, photography, text, sandbags, postcards, a flag, semen, oil paint and pubic hair. But the thread that binds it all is narrative. “Most of my work starts from a place where I am writing a lot and not necessarily from a visual point of view but from a literary perspective,” he says. “I like to treat text as material.”

Kelley shares intensely private moments: sexual fantasies, memories and fears. He stands unabashedly naked and allows viewers to experience life with HIV from the inside. For example, Of Hope and Sickness depicts the artist lying ill and helpless on his parents’ couch. His mother took this photo just days before his diagnosis. On the same couch, four years later, is an image of Kelley’s infant daughter. They are shown side-by-side, vulnerable, swaddled in white in a way reminiscent of baptismal clothing. Who is innocent? Which of these helpless beings deserves compassion? 

Such difficult questions confront viewers at every turn. The private blurs with the public. For instance, Order is a Canadian flag that was mailed out and ejaculated on by men with HIV. This work is an unfortunate choice in an otherwise sensitive and engrossing show, but it amply expresses Kelley’s passionate feelings about the government’s choice to criminalize an illness. 

On this point he may be right. Canada has the dubious distinction of being a world leader in prosecuting people with HIV. Some 155 people were charged under the law as of 2014, despite the many experts who have outlined the low-to-zero possibility of transmission by people receiving treatment, and numerous groups decrying the law’s harmful effect on public health. 

But in the end, it’s individual hearts and consciences this show eloquently touches. “Who am I to judge?” I ask myself as I leave. After all, I walked into a seniors’ home when I felt under the weather. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, between 2,000 and 8,000 people die each year of the flu and its complications.  If people like Kelley are potential criminals, then surely I am too.

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