Celebrating his 30-plus years of art and advocacy, Eric Rhein (BFA 1984 Painting and Sculpture and MFA 2000 Fine Arts) was honored last month at the 12th annual Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards, in recognition of his contributions to AIDS awareness through artwork and activism. Founded in 1988, Visual AIDS is a contemporary arts organization committed to raising AIDS awareness, creating dialogue around HIV issues today, and supporting HIV+ artists. Rhein, who has been involved with the organization for over 20 years, received the 2017 Bill Olander Award, presented each year to an individual in the creative arts living with HIV. With Rhein, Visual AIDS also recognized artists Zoe Leonard, Sur Rodney (Sur) and Brice Brown at the May 22 ceremony and benefit.

Rhein is known for a media-spanning practice that incorporates sculpture, photography, drawing, found text and materials, frequently layered together. His work often links the delicacy and transcendence of the natural world with that of the human body—and psyche—invoking the sensuality, strength and vulnerability of corporeal life. Since his HIV positive status in 1987, Rhein has charted an ever-evolving course of personal experience in his artwork; it is through images and objects that he confronts and comprehends (his diagnosis, the world around him) and shows compassion.

Rhein’s commitment to advocacy and activism is long-standing as well. Since its inception in 1994, Rhein has been a part of Visual AIDS' Frank Moore Archive Project, founded by artists Frank Moore and David Hirsch to preserve the work and legacies of artists with HIV/AIDS. Originally a slide archive, it is now available online as the Visual AIDS Artists+ Registry, and is the largest archive and registry of works by artists with HIV/AIDS. Rhein was also recently interviewed for the Smithsonian Archives of American Art's “Visual Arts & the AIDS Epidemic Oral History Project,” which collects interviews with key witnesses to the AIDS epidemic and documents its impact on the visual art community.

I spoke with Rhein on the occasion of the important award and his many achievements.

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