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Cory Roberts-Auli Papers

 Collection
Identifier: CSRC-0078

Scope and Contents

This collection includes articles, printed materials, correspondence, photographs, and slides related to Cory Roberts-Auli's art show performances and life as an artist. Materials mostly document his exhibition "The New Shrouds of Turin: The Plague Years" and working with Luz Calvo and Gil Cuadros. Exhibition description:

Conceived by Cory Roberts-Auli, in collaboration with photographer Luz Calvo, this series of portraits present and represent the realities of nine people living with AIDS. Impressing the blood of these individuals on fabric and documenting this process in photos, the artists seek to bring the viewer into direct visual, tactile, olfactory contact with the body in the extremity of in the extremity of disease.

Blood--the literal life and death, the vessel of disease ittself--ishere taken out of the body and displayed. Viewers are almost compelled to experience the panic that comes from contact with the body fluids and the persons of these nine people living and dying with AIDS. The women, men and one child on the canvases have a variety of harrowing experiences to relate. In dealing with the Plague that has descended on their lives, they pause and offer us a glimpse.

This art creates new relics, new Shrouds, and substitutes itself for the cliches of religious imagery, reinscribing AIDS within the Western discourse of martyrdom and transcendence. In doing so, the portraits confron the moral posturing that has been used to isolate and oppress people living and dying with AIDS. The News Shrouds do not represent, they are a repudiation of the stigmatization that has been responsible for perpetuating the spread of HIV epidemic and the deaths of too many people worldwide.

Dates

  • Creation: 1990-1996

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research, but is located offsite and requires advanced notice to retrieve materials and deliver onsite.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright has not been assigned to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. All requests for permission to publish must be submitted in writing to the Chicano Studies Research Center Library. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center as the owner of the physical item and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.

Biography

Cory Roberts-Auli (April 10, 1963 - March 10, 1996) described himself as a gay mixed-heritage Latino. He was of Puerto Rican and Irish descent and grew up in New Jersey and later New York City, where he moved when he was 16. He was a self-taught artist who worked in painting from 1990-1996. At the beginning of his career, his paintings were traditional, using oils and acrylics. He would add other materials, such as medical supplies, to the canvas through the years. Eventually, he used HIV-infected blood and other bodily fluids as pigments for his artwork. He co-created and co-edited Infected Faggot Perspectives, a zine distributed throughout America and Germany, where he lived towards the end of his life. The zine is composed of collage, photography, and written word.

Extent

.25 linear ft. (1 box (.25 linear ft.))

Language of Materials

English

Spanish; Castilian

German

Japanese

Abstract

This is a collection of slides and papers of the artist and activist, Cory Roberts-Auli.

Physical Location

This collection is located offsite at the Southern Regional Library Facility (SRLF).

Title
Cory Roberts-Auli Papers
Status
Completed
Subtitle
1990-1996
Author
Rosal Lorico
Date
2016/2023, 2024
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
The collection includes materials in English, Spanish, German, and Japanese.
Edition statement
2016. Revised 2023 and 2024.

Repository Details

Part of the Chicano Studies Research Center Library Repository

Contact:
144 Haines Hall
Box 951544
Los Angeles California 90095-1544 United States
(310) 206-6052
(310) 206-1784 (Fax)