“AIDS provokes a confrontation with the body. The Book Of Plagues provokes a confrontation with AIDS. It addresses contemporary issues which resonate powerfully with the past. From the 14th century Black Death to today’s AIDS crisis, public reaction has been remarkably the same: a widespread sense of panic and fear; of blaming and victimizing the stricken ones; and government indifference to adequate funding for research and caring assistance. Constructed to open outwards, the page structure of The Book Of Plagues creates a montage of juxtaposed historical images which frame contemporary issues as they unfold in the second half of the book. At its very center is a smaller book containing essays by Margot Lovejoy, Dorothy Levenson, and Paula A. Treichler. Today’s epidemic conditions force a new analysis of sexual differences and of construction of identity. AIDS has brought to the fore one of the most important issues of our time – the change in sexual categories. With AIDS, the private has become necessarily public, as victims of the disease battle for visibility, political power, and change. As old scourges–tuberculosis, cholera, venereal diseases – resurge in the current global and economic collapse this bookwork insists on the need to respond to the present danger.”
– From the artist’s website