Timothy DuWhite




In February 2015, Visual AIDS hosted AIDS & Its Metaphors in collaboration with Issue Project Room at Artists’ Space. Below, see video of Timothy DuWhite reading “Joy Revisited,” “How the mouth loses a fight,” and Essex Hemphill’s “American Wedding.”

On Friday, May 29, Visual AIDS hosts Metaphors & Their Distemper, a follow-up reading event at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Artists and authors Gregg Bordowitz, Morgan Bassichis, Orlando Ferrand, Park McArthur, Stacy Szymaszek and Frederick Weston perform readings considering diagnosis, disease, coping and wellness. HIV is a primary focus, yet the theme is inclusive of all ailments and predicaments and their embodiments in writing.

We hope to see you this Friday at The Whitney at 6:30 p.m.! Event information here.





Watch additional AIDS & Its Metaphors readings by Pamela Sneed, Lynne Tillman, Jessica Whitbread and Bordowitz here.

AIDS & Its Metaphors was produced in conjunction with the inaugural publication of Visual AIDS’s Duets series, “Stephen Andrews & Gregg Bordowitz in Conversation” (2014), which features a conversation between Bordowitz and Visual AIDS artist member Stephen Andrews. Duets is a series of publications that pairs artists, activists, writers and thinkers in dialogues about their creative practices and current social issues around HIV/AIDS. In the first publication of the series, Bordowitz speaks to longtime friend Andrews about painting, poetry, cosmology, and survival. Tillman writes the publication’s foreword. Further information on the publication can be found here.


Timothy DuWhite, through mistakes, short-comings, and failures, has been able to fashion himself a body of work that speaks directly to the value of transparency as well as self-accountability. As a spoken word artist, Timothy enlists his audience members in narratives spanning from: the pain of love; the insurmountable teeth of joy; the importance of forgiveness, The realities of living with a disease, The struggles of a man of color, The struggles of a queer man, The interconnections of the human experience, and every bit of beauty that can be found in the small and seemingly insignificant. Outside of the spotlight and the stage, Timothy frequently facilitates workshops in the following categories: Poetry, Fiction, HIV/AIDS Awareness, the unpacking of masculinity and the importance of the individual narrative.