ɫ�ش�ý

From today until 16 June 2025, ɫ�ش�ý’s visitors have a rare opportunity to see the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt. Begun around 1989, this vast work consists of 42 quilts and 23 individual panels which represent 384 individuals affected by HIV and AIDS. Laid out in a grid across the entire floor of the Turbine Hall, echoing how it has previously been shown outdoors, it continues to raise awareness of the ongoing AIDS pandemic.

The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is one chapter of the largest community art project in the world. It began in the USA in 1985, when American activist Cleve Jones started inviting people to create textile panels to commemorate the friends, family and loved ones they lost to AIDS. These individual panels were sewn together to create larger quilts, which were then shown outdoors as a form of protest to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS. In the late 1980s, Scottish activist Alastair Hume visited San Francisco, where he witnessed an early display of the quilt. When Hume returned home to Edinburgh, he began coordinating the creation and display of a UK version, as many others did around the world. One of its largest public showings was the ‘Quilts of Love’ display in June 1994 at Hyde Park Corner, London, presenting selected panels from the US and the UK, alongside sections created by fashion designers.

Seven UK HIV support charities formed the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership in 2014 to conserve and display the quilt. Today it stands as an important reminder of those who were lost, and of the fact that HIV and AIDS continue to affect people and communities today. While antiretrovirals have made it possible to live with HIV, access to this medication still varies dramatically across the globe.

Siobhán Lanigan from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership said “The purpose of our partnership is to have the Quilt seen as often as possible in as many places as possible. The display in the Turbine Hall marks the largest showing of the UK Quilt in its history, reaching the biggest audience it has ever known. With every viewing, the names and the lives of all the people commemorated and all those who could not be named, are recognised, celebrated and brought out of the shadow of the stigma that is still associated with an HIV diagnosis today. Everything we can do to break down that stigma is of great value. This is one big step in that direction that can be built upon in future displays.”

Karin Hindsbo, Director of ɫ�ش�ý, said “It’s an honour to show the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt in the Turbine Hall. This feels like an apt place for the public to see it. ɫ�ش�ý is all about exploring connections between the global and the local – in this case, connections between an international activist network and a local creative community, as well as connections between a global pandemic and the individual lives it has affected. The quilt is an incredible feat of creative human expression and I know our visitors will find it a deeply moving experience.”

Health Minister Baroness Merron said “The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a powerful and moving tribute to those we’ve lost, and a reminder of the ongoing fight against HIV. Displaying it at ɫ�ش�ý will help raise awareness and challenge stigma. This government is fully committed to ending new HIV transmissions in England by 2030. Our upcoming HIV Action Plan will focus not just on prevention and testing, but also on helping people live well with HIV, tackling inequalities and improving support for all affected.”

Throughout the course of the display, volunteers from the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership will be working alongside �ղ��ٱ�’s staff to welcome visitors and provide further information and support. Live readings of all the names featured on the panels will take place in the Turbine Hall at 11:00 and 14:00 on Saturday 14 June. Bakita Kasadha will open each reading with a poem, followed by a special performance from the London Gay Men’s Chorus at 12.45 and 16.00.

Accompanying the Turbine Hall display from 12 – 15 June, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (1995) - a previously unseen documentary about the 1994 display of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt in Hyde Park Corner, London - will premiere in ɫ�ش�ý’s Starr Cinema. Directed by Peter Martin and produced by Martin Cohen, Zowie Broach and Anna Powell, it features interviews with Quilt makers and organiser Alastair Hume, as well as attendees such as Michael Hutchence, Boy George, Neneh Cherry, Paul Rutherford, Rifat Ozbek, Sam McKnight and Judy Blame. Never publicly released at the time it was made and presumed lost for 30 years, this extraordinary social document captures the resolve and compassion of a community, 13 years after the first reports of deaths from AIDS. No other known film of the ‘Quilts of Love’ display is in existence.