By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — A month after Osvaldo Perdomo received his AIDS diagnosis in 2004, he bought a cemetery plot. Six months later, he said an art class brought him back to life.
"It was like magic," said Perdomo of the class at Chelsea's Gay Men's Health Crisis center (GMHC). "For the first time, I forgot about the virus."
That feeling of escape is what led Perdomo, a Cuban-born 51-year-old resident of the Upper East Side, to eventually become an instructor. Today, he is co-curating GMHC's "Art & AIDS: Loving Life," an annual exhibit which opens Tuesday at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation in SoHo.
The show features nearly 150 works across mediums including photography, painting, sculpture and drawing. Participating artists, all GMHC clients, include amateurs and professionals, the newly diagnosed and those living with HIV/AIDS for decades, men in good health and men in fragile states.
Not all of the artists list their real names, a testament to the stigma and sense of shame that co-curator David Livingston said many people don't realize, in this age of antiretroviral drug cocktails, is still attached to HIV/AIDS. The joke last year, he said, was that the show should be called "Art & AIDS: It Ain't Over."
Before that show, one artist told his family about his diagnosis by sending them an invitation.
"He said, I want you to come to the opening, and then we'll talk about it," Livingston said.
Because many of these artists are living on disability and scant budgets, 100 percent of proceeds from sales will go directly back to them. A silent auction of a few select pieces will go to benefit GMHC.
The most affordable paintings are priced at $500, while a dress designed by Geary Marcello and worn by Mariah Carey at the 2009 Grammys is listed at $5000.
In addition to the psychic benefits, the curators said that painting, drawing and other forms of art can boost health by decreasing stress levels.
"When you have a compromised immune system, you should surround yourself with positive images," Perdomo said.
The show is hosted by the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, which was created in the 1989 to preserve gay-themed paintings that often wound up in SoHo trashcans.
This year, the positive images of gay men are particularly poignant amid repeated recent reports of hate crimes in the Village and Chelsea.
"I grew up with this idea that I was the only one in the world," said Livingston, who is 49 and from Cape Cod, Mass. Today, with all the openly gay celebrities and television characters, the fact that youth still experience so much bullying and depression "really alarming," he said.
Still, at the exhibit, where the majority of the work expresses optimistic themes of sensuality and hope, beauty and sexuality, the curators hope they can send a message of healing and empowerment.
"We can show through this art that we went through difficult times as gays and lesbians," Perdomo said. "And we evolved."
"Arts & AIDS: Loving Life" runs through Oct.30 at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation at 26 Wooster Street.
