The location, Harlem, was suggested by the poet and activist Pamela Sneed, who points out that Black artists have always led AIDS activism, but their losses and contributions have often been overlooked or erased from AIDS narratives. When Last Address resumes this year, on Saturday, May 28, the approach will be a little different. 44th St, the last address of Reinaldo Arenas. "At our last event, in Times Square, we had over a hundred people."Īlex Fialho "Last Address" Tribute Walk in Times Square, at 328 W.
Before the pandemic forced a pause, Fialho says the walks grew from year to year. 23rd Street," Fialho recalls, "That personal ritual of remembrance really gave me a sense of the lived experience of these artists who I greatly admired."Īs programs director of the nonprofit arts organization Visual AIDS (a position now held by Kyle Croft), Fialho wanted to make that experience public, so he started approaching cinemas and museum partners to hold "Last Address" tribute walks in neighborhoods across the city, events to collectively memorialize key AIDS-related sites and recognize the ongoing presence, contributions, and impact of queer artists.īeginning in 2014, tribute walks took place in the East Village, then Chelsea (2015), the Lower East Side (2016), the West Village (2017), the Meatpacking District (2018), and Times Square (2019). "Keith Haring's address at 542 LaGuardia Place, Felix Gonzales-Torres's address at London Terrace on W. Having just moved to New York, Fialho says he was inspired to visit these sites himself.
When Alex Fialho saw the elegiac film as a young curator in his mid-20s, it struck him as a powerful meditation on loss, and a statement about the ongoing presence of these artists in memory and history. In his 2010 short documentary Last Address, filmmaker Ira Sachs streamed images of the exteriors of the houses, apartments, and lofts where New York City artists had lived at the time of their deaths from AIDS-related complications.