In the Curator’s Statement:

The title of this selection, "i am anyone," is taken from a poem by e.e. cummings, "someone i am wandering a town (if its." Here are the last few verses:

i am any (while around him streets
taking moment off by moment day
thankfully become each other) one who
feels a world crylaughingly float away

leaving just this strolling ghostly doll
of an almost vanished me(for whom
the departure of everything real is the
arrival of everything true)and i'm

no (if deeply less conceivable than
birth or death or even than breathing shall

blossom a first star) one

As I delved into the thousands of images of The Archive Project, I wanted to avoid putting together a selection of images that would act as a framework for an examination of subjectivity or the self. Of course, that's what it became. The process made me question separate (and often unreconciled) notions of queer identity. On the one hand, identity as a political instrument, organized around ideas of solidarity, resistance and social critique; on the other hand, identity as a tangled discursive category, a shifting and perhaps uncomfortable construction: a critique of identity.

Perversely, maybe, I zeroed in on floaters: masked subjects who seem to float away, whose identities are both assertions and retreats, hybrid bodies and almost vanished Mes. They are not negative, but liberating. Their withdrawal is an active search. Their resistance, their power even, is in their flight.

B i o g r a p h y

Anthony Allen is Associate Director at Paula Cooper Gallery and a translator. In 2007 he organized an exhibition of works by Ralph Lemon at The Kitchen with Claire Tancons. He was an editor of the now defunct publication Soft Targets. He lives in New York.

Every month, Visual AIDS invites guest curators, drawn from both the arts and AIDS communities, to select several works from the Frank Moore Archive Project.

Founded in 1988 by arts professionals as a response to the effects of AIDS on the arts community and as a way of organizing artists, arts institutions, and arts audiences towards direct action, Visual AIDS has evolved into an arts organization with a two-pronged mission: 1) Through the Frank Moore Archive Project, the largest slide library of work by artists living with HIV and the estates of artists who have died of AIDS, Visual AIDS historicizes the contributions of visual artists with HIV while supporting their ability to continue making art and furthering their professional careers, 2) In collaboration with museums, galleries, artists, schools, and AIDS service organizations, Visual AIDS produces exhibitions, publications, and events utilizing visual art to spread the message “AIDS IS NOT OVER.”

The Body is now the most frequently visited HIV/AIDS-related site on the Web, according to the Medical Library Association and also the most frequently visited disease-specific site on the Web, according to Hot 100. The Body contains a rich collection of information on topics ranging from HIV prevention, state-of-the-art treatment issues, humor and art. An invaluable resource, The Body is used by clinicians, patients and the general public. Part of The Body's mission is to enable artistic expression to reach the Web, and to join art with other resources needed to help the public comprehend the enormity and devastation of the AIDS pandemic and to experience its human and spiritual dimensions.