João Florêncio Lecturer in History of Modern and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, University of Exeter

If you remember the 1980s, you will likely summon up the image of the Grim Reaper or a black tombstone when asked to think about AIDS. Those images, embedded in our collective memory by two iconic Australian and British public health campaigns of that decade, reveal how AIDS has been both a medical and a cultural epidemic since it was first clinically observed in the US in 1981. In the words of American scholar Paula Treichler, AIDS has always partly been an “epidemic of meanings”

As we commemorate another World AIDS Day and remember all those who have died, we must remind ourselves of all that is still left to do to eradicate HIV. We must also remember the role culture plays in shaping our understanding of the virus and those living with it.

If we take into account the highly homophobic social context in which news of the condition first started circulating, then its cultural dimensions become all the more important. We must consider what AIDS meant to people in the 1980s and 1990s, and what HIV still means today, at a time when antiretroviral therapies are being used successfully to manage existing infections and prevent new ones.

Take, for instance, these 1987 public service announcements, produced in the US for the State Health Division of Oregon