Theodore (ted) Kerr
Site: The Luminary
Theodore (ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer, organizer and artist whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture. Creating postcards, posters, stickers, and collages, Kerr’s art practice is about bringing together pop culture, photography and text to create meaningful shareable ephemera and images.
For Counterpublic, Kerr presents a series of wheatpasted posters that share a single background image: a glitch-informed edit of a photo depicting Robert Rayford’s home. Rayford was a first-wave HIV victim who lived in St. Louis on Delmar Avenue. Kerr pulled the photo from a video still of an ABC interview with Rayford’s mother and older brother in 1987 following the news that Rayford had HIV when he died at 16 years of age in 1969.
Kerr is in residence at The Luminary in May and June to organize a series of public programs, and gatherings at Red Chair Studios and The Griot Museum of Black History focused on HIV/AIDS in the St. Louis community.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Canadian born Theodore Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer, organizer and artist whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture. Creating postcards, posters, stickers, and collages, Kerr’s art practice is about bringing together pop culture, photography and text to create fun and meaningful shareable ephemera and images. Kerr’s writing has appeared in Women’s Studies Quarterly, The New Inquiry, BOMB, CBC (Canada), Lambda Literary, POZ Magazine, The Advocate, Cineaste, The St. Louis American, IndieWire, HyperAllergic, and other publications.
Kerr is a founding member of the What Would An HIV Doula Do? collective, a community of people committed to better implicating community within the ongoing response to HIV/AIDS. Kerr was the programs manager at Visual AIDS where he worked to ensure social justice was an important lens through which to understand the ongoing epidemic. He also served as the programs manager at the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. Kerr earned his MA from Union Theological Seminary and his BA from the New School. Currently, Kerr teaches at The New School. He has lectured at Hunter College, Rutgers and Skidmore College.
