Information Studies Colloquium: The Art History of the Storage Unit: Processing the AIDS-Related Stewardship of Family and Friends with Alex Fialho

Abstract:

My dissertation Apertures onto AIDS: African American Photography and the Art History of the Storage Unit narrates the intimate stories and archival efforts of families and friends who have cared for AIDS-related artworks, stewarding them in storage units, under beds, and in basements over several decades. In relation to these personal provenances amidst AIDS-related loss, my research develops an analytic I term “the art history of the storage unit.” I want to consider together the stakes of why and how these artworks by African American artists have been stewarded and cared for in personal and familial collections, outside the purview of museums and other archival institutions that due to erasure and white supremacy have often overlooked these objects.

Bio: 

Alex Fialho is a PhD candidate in Yale University’s Combined PhD program in the History of Art and African American Studies. As an art historian and curator, Fialho focuses on modern and contemporary art, Black queer and feminist thought, and AIDS cultural studies. His dissertation “Apertures Onto AIDS: African American Photography and the Art History of the Storage Unit” animates AIDS-related histories through the lens of artists Lola Flash, Darrel Ellis, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Kia LaBeija. He was a 2023–2024 Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Based in Los Angeles, Fialho is a 2024–2025 Predoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute and the 2025–2026 Luce/ACSL Ellen Holtzman Dissertation Fellow in American Art.

*Fialho worked as Programs Director of the New York-based arts non-profit Visual AIDS from 2014–2019, facilitating projects around the history and immediacy of the ongoing AIDS pandemic, while intervening against the widespread whitewashing of HIV/AIDS cultural narratives. As an Oral Historian for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project, he conducted in-depth oral histories with fifteen cultural producers including Ron Athey, Douglas Crimp, Nan Goldin, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Julie Tolentino.