THE New York AIDS Memorial unveiled a new site-specific sculpture by Jim Hodges as part of its public art initiative and the city’s Art in the Parks program. Opened in 2016 to honor the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who died of AIDS, the memorial has hosted nearly 20 installations and events by artists including Jean-Michel Othoniel and Jenny Holzer. Entitled Craig’s Closet (2023), Hodges’ sculpture will be on view for a full year, allowing visitors to the Memorial to engage with it during Pride Month in June and beyond. Taking the form of a granite and painted bronze replica of a domestic bedroom closet with hanging clothes and shelves filled with personal items, Craig’s Closet explores memory, loss and healing.
“We had always envisioned the park as a place to live and breathe,” says Keith Fox, chairman of the memorial’s board of directors. “Memory and memorialization, especially around something as complex and ongoing as the AIDS epidemic, can be challenging, but the arts provide a wonderful entry point for considering the impact of AIDS not only about the creative community, but in relation to New York and the world as a whole.
Under the direction of Executive Director Dave Harper, memorial programs spanned artistic disciplines and mediums to engage with broad audiences and teach visitors about the lives and work of those who have been lost to AIDS, as well as activists and guardians who have continued the struggle for the past four decades. Hodges’ sculpture weighs 9,000 pounds and stands nearly nine feet tall, making it one of the memorial’s most intricate projects to date.
Located in the St. Vincent Triangle, next to many spaces that were central to the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, including the former hospital that housed the East Coast’s first and largest AIDS ward of the United States, the site of the Memorial is a poignant reminder of the territory’s history and of disease.
“I hope people will see Craig’s Closet as a mirror of their own understanding of love and remembrance,” says Fox. “I think visitors will use the installation as a place to remember someone they love, to reflect on the loss and to feel connected to our shared history. Above all, I hope they will feel renewed by the incredible poetry and beauty of Jim’s work.
Hodges himself lived and worked in New York as a queer artist during the height of the AIDS crisis in the city and lost many friends to illnesses related to the disease. Creating Craig’s closet, he considered the layered significance of a closet as a private space to conceal the objects we cherish and collect. “Inside a closet, time itself is frozen in contrasting counters and fragmented timelines in things accumulated and arranged in juxtaposed order, stacked and lined up or quickly tossed or casually set down to be picked up. charge later,” Hodges wrote in a statement accompanying the sculpture. “The stage is set and the stories that bloom come to life each time the doors open, each time giving us a reading, a reminder, an understanding of who we are, where we have been, of the secrets and dreams that we hold.” Hodges’ closet remains permanently open so viewers can read their own meaning into its contents.
“The privilege of showing Craig’s Closet in association and with the sponsorship of the New York City Aids Memorial, and with the support of so many who have dedicated and dedicated their time and energies to bringing the work to the public, is a great honor,” said Hodges. The arts journal. “I am beyond grateful that this piece is unveiled in this context, at this time, on this site.”
