Andrew Suggs
Andrew Suggs is an arts and AIDS worker from Appalachian Tennessee. Their work and research focuses on contemporary art and HIV/AIDS, queer art and artists, performance, disruptive strategies, and photography. Andrew is a curator, writer, and practicing artist. They are currently pursuing at PhD in Art History at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Email
Instagram
Full CV
Everything I Know About AIDS I Learned from the Movies
Essay
2024
A version of this essay was published in the inaugural issue of Gleaning, a Toronto-based film zine edited by Jacob Creapult.
“Vada and Thomas J. shared their first kiss under a willow tree, and when Thomas J. returned later, alone, to search for Vada’s lost mood ring, a swarm of bees stung him to death. He was allergic.
In my young mind, this was the perfect metaphor for my eventual death or the loss of my boyfriend, and I now realize that putting this story on a loop was a rehearsal for the certain tragedy I had begun to see as inevitable as my sexuality budded and I watched gay men die on television from AIDS. I had already mixed up sex and death at age 9. The two were forever fused for me. A first kiss meant death by a thousand stings.”