What happens when everyday objects belonging to people living with HIV suddenly appear in the middle of the city? With his nationwide art project »BARBIE und KEN sind HIV-positiv«, Franz Wassermann drew attention in 1996 to the living reality of those affected with exactly 2100 objects. Shrink-wrapped in film and marked with a green dot, they hung on billboards, in train stations, bookshops and cafés in six Austrian cities (Vienna, Linz, Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Bregenz). The art project confronted passersby with their own fear of contact. In the following years, the art project was continued in Munich, Burghausen and London. Thirty years later, Qwien shows the objects for the first time in a museum-style hanging in frames. The focus is on what has changed in the handling of HIV over three decades and what still applies. Photographs and documents from the project archive tell of the origins of the action, while the artist looks back on it from the present in a recorded conversation.
Franz Wassermann lives and works as a sculptor in Vienna.