Œuvre d'art public

Aids Memorial

 Bruce Wilson, Aids Memorial, 2004.© Marc André Brouillette
 Bruce Wilson, Aids Memorial, 2004.© Marc André Brouillette
 Bruce Wilson, Aids Memorial, 2004.© Marc André Brouillette
 Bruce Wilson, Aids Memorial, 2004.© Marc André Brouillette
Location:
Sunset Beach, Broughton Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Artwork creator(s): 
Wilson, Bruce
Text author(s): 
Santayana, George
Installation year: 
2004
Description: 

Curved wall, like a ribbon. On it, the names of thousands of BC AIDS victims have been cut out in the steel. A poem is written above.

Text of the artwork: 

With you a part of me hath passed away

For in the peopled forest of my mind

A tree made leafless by this wintry wind

Shall never don again its green array.

Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,

Have something of their friendliness resigned;

Another, if I would, I could not find,

And I am grown much older in a day.

But yet I treasure in my memory

Your gift of charity, your mellow ease,

And the dear honour of your amity;

For these once mine, my life is rich with these.

And I scarce know which part may greater be,--

What I keep of you, or you rob of me.


“But the energy that is me will not be lost” Dr Peter

 

Name of AIDS victim

Text theme: 
Presence or absence, as felt by those who have lost loved ones
Artwork theme: 

Aids

Note(s): 

The names have been placed randomly on the Memorial, representing the random nature of the impact of HIV/AIDS.

 

The poem's title, W.P., refers to Warwick Potter, a friend who died in an 1893 boating accident.

Document(s): 

Vancouver Aids Memorial

Vancouver_AIDS_Memorial_Society (2001).  Vancouver Aids Memorial. <http://www.aidsmemorial.info/home> : Vancouver AIDS Memorial Society

Public Art in Vancouver. Angels Among Lions

Steil, John, Aileen Stalker (2009).  Public Art in Vancouver. Angels Among Lions. Vancouver : TouchWood Editions, p. 176