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The art of activism, the publication of the Art+Positive archives




Client: Dr. Daniel Berger, MD, Director, and John Neff, Curator, Iceberg Projects, Chicago, IL

Militant Eroticism: The Art+Positive Archives. Edited and with contributions by Dr. Daniel Berger and John Neff. Contributions by Debra Levine, Ray Navarro, Hunter Reynolds, and David Wojnarowicz. Published by Sternberg Press, 2017. 130 pages, 8.5 x 11 inches.

In the 1980s and 90s, arts activist group Art+Positive organized to address AIDS-phobia, censorship, homophobia, misogyny, and racism in the art world. Members and collaborators included Lola Flash, Nan Goldin, Aldo Hernández, Ray Navarro, Hunter Reynolds, Julie Tolentino, and David Wojnarowicz.

Collected by Reynolds, the Art+Positive archives was on view for the first time in two decades at Iceberg Projects, Chicago.

This book is the first survey of Art+Positive. It features exhibition images alongside artworks, documents, and ephemera from the archives—many of which had never been published before. 

An archive, an exhibition, a publication

Militant Eroticism documents the gallery exhibition and showcases materials in the archive.

The book’s sequence translates a walk-through of the exhibition. The page is letter size, like many of the archive’s papers, and many materials are shown at or near one-to-one scale. The cover and endpapers cheekily reference works by Art+Positive members.

The book is designed to be as exhaustive as it is immersive.












Putty pink punctuates Militant Eroticism, drawn from Ray Navarro’s Equipped and alluding to the white skintone of prosthetic devices. The triptych reflects on the debilitating effects of AIDS on vital bodies, speaking to the disease’s complexity and relationship with sexuality and race.
In the book, the color is a mnemonic for the emotional dimension of the archive. Art+Positive’s wide-ranging actions are on view—as are the human connections that compelled them.