Premiere: Visual AIDS presents seeds in a dying colony

Floor 3, Theater

The Whitney Museum of American Art is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for the premiere of seeds in a dying colony, a program of four newly commissioned videos that move through the afterlives of colonialism and the ongoing HIV epidemic. Across fractured histories and landscapes marked by extraction, the works trace how systems of power shape the body, memory, and experiences of care.

The program features newly commissioned work by: Edgar Hudson (Tanzania), Bruna Kury and Matheus Mello (Brazil/Spain), Sido Lansari (Morocco/France), and Micaela Cyrino (Brazil).

Join Visual AIDS at 2:30 pm for a reception before the screening begins at 3:00 pm. The New York City premiere will be followed by a post-screening discussion with human rights lawyer Dr. Chiseche Mibenge and artist Zacarías Gonzalez, moderated by Blake Paskal. Extending on the themes of seeds in a dying colony, the conversation will discuss the impact of global AIDS funding cuts and the importance of positioning AIDS activism within an international context.

The program responds to a moment marked by deepening neocolonialism and mass desensitization to violent, preventable death, including recent spikes in HIV cases and deaths. Driven by cuts to international aid programs like USAID and PEPFAR, this resurgence reveals how access to care remains shaped by broader systems of U.S. and Western power that determine whose lives are protected and whose deaths are allowed to pass in silence. 

The artists in this program were selected by a jury of filmmakers who each selected an artist to mentor through their production process. The mentors of the 2026 program include Amil Shivji, Hiura Fernandes, Ésery Mondesir, and J Triangular.

Visual AIDS is a New York-based nonprofit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy because AIDS is not over. Visual AIDS is a Whitney Education Community Partner.

Accessibility:  All Day With(out) Art films are captioned. CART closed captioning is available for opening remarks and post screening discussion. 

Speaker bios:
Dr. Chiseche Mibenge is a human rights lawyer and educator. Her academic career includes affiliation with Utrecht University (Netherlands), Stanford University and CUNY. She is a thought partner and independent advisor to global feminist and interfaith development projects, such as the Rustin Fund for Global Equality, and the Global Interfaith Network for People of all Sexes, Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Expressions. Chiseche is the author of ‘Sex and International Tribunals: The Erasure of Gender from the War Narrative’ (University of Pennsylvania Press) and her creative writing has been published in literary journals such as the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Columbia Journal, and the Evergreen Review.

Zacarías González is a transdisciplinary artist in NYC whose participatory practice uses food as a container for collective inquiry, collaborative authorship, and the building of networks of care. Working at the intersection of documentary, participatory art, and pedagogical resistance, González creates conditions for gathering and relationality that emerge through shared space, communal eating, and learning together. Through their ongoing project "Carry," González uses deployable mobile structures—kitchen carts and garden carts designed in collaboration for public space activation. These objects function as tools, sites of pedagogy, and performance, becoming part of the work itself rather than merely supporting it. By extending communal practice into public spaces, the work resists permanence while building resilient networks of care and imagination.

Their work focuses on long-term projects: 吃了吗 | Have you eaten? with migrant sex workers; "The Future of Food" with Creative Time; EARTH LIFE at the Institute for Public Architecture; and Auxilio Space, a community-based food center supporting queer, Black, trans, and Indigenous communities and individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Work has been supported by Creative Time, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, MoMA PS1, Pioneer Works, and Socrates Sculpture Park. They are a Visiting Lecturer at SVA and The New School.