After/Life
Doug Adams Gallery, Center for the Arts & Religion
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California
February 13 – June 30, 2020
Installation of AFTER/LIFE, an exhibition of works by Ed Aulerich-Sugai and Mark Mitchell. Photo: Doug Adams Gallery
Guest curated by Alla Efimova, AFTER/LIFE brought together works by Ed Aulerich-Sugai and Mark Mitchell that explore loss, memory, and the rituals of mourning in the context of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Ed Aulerich-Sugai, Figures, Repose: Ascending Figure, Study #7, 1991. Oil on canvas. Courtesy: Ed Aulerich-Sugai Collection and Archive. Photo: Doug Adams Gallery
Aulerich-Sugai’s final body of work, Figures (1991-94), features translucent, weightless nudes suspended in a state between presence and absence, a reflection of his own experience of pain and grief.
Mark Mitchell, The Choking Kind or White Wash, 2015. Silk, cotton, wool, leather, and wood, 73 x 46 x 8 in
Mark Mitchell’s hand-sewn burial garments—exquisitely constructed using traditional techniques—honor the lives of friends lost to AIDS, offering garments of care as acts of love and remembrance.
Opening on the 26th anniversary of Aulerich-Sugai’s death and overlapping with Pride Month and the AIDS2020 conference, AFTER/LIFE offered a space for reflection, reverence, and artistic resilience.