For Day With(out) Art 2025, Visual AIDS presents Meet Us Where We’re At, a program of six videos centering the experiences of drug users and harm reduction as theyintersect with the ongoing HIV crisis.
Commissioned artists from Puerto Rico, Brazil, Nigeria, Germany, and Vietnam explore the complexity of drug use across public and private spaces. Some works document visible worlds, such as a harm reduction program in a Berlin park or a night out during Rio’s Carnival, while others turn inward to hidden spaces of safety, including bedrooms, underground clinics, andmoments of intimacy.
The program speaks to both the physical locations where harm reduction is practiced and a wider shift toward centering drug users as authors of their own stories. Rooted in the philosophy of meeting people where they are without judgment, Meet Us Where We’re At affirms the full reality of drug use, including its pleasures, risks,and role in how people survive, care, and connect, amplifying drug users as essential participants in the global HIV response.
Meet Us Where We’re At Videos:
Voices of Resilience Kenneth Idongesit Usoro
Voices of Resilience follows the lives of queer individuals and drug users living with HIV in Nigeria. Through personal interviews and experimental visual storytelling, the film shows the protagonists’ worlds as they seek out underground harm reduction services.
Gustavo Vinagre and Vinicius Couto, chempassion
In the magical realist film, chempassion, a gay man reminisces about his orgy days and chem sex, contemplating what the future holds for himself and his close relationships.
Ghost in the Park Camila Flores-Fernández
Ghost in the Park traces the narratives of the community of Görlitzer Park, an area in Berlin known for public drug use and trade. Highlighting “drug consumption buses” that promote safer use and aim to reduce HIV transmission among drug users, the space of the bus is taken as an axis through which the experiences and feelings of the community around the park are amplified.
The Sister’s Journey Hoàng Thái Anh
Through a documentary style, The Sister’s Journey explores the daily life of a transgender woman in Vietnam using drugs. The film delves into her fear of stigma, struggles she faces, and the vital role of harm reduction services and healthcare available to her.
Realce (Highlight) Camilo Tapia Flores
Realce is a documentary short following two HIV-positive friends, DJ Deseo and porn actor Fernando Brutto, during one of their performances at Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival. The duo move through the streets of Rio and Carnival “blocos,” sharing their reflections on friendship, undetectability, their relationship with sex, and drug use within their own community.
¿Por qué tanto dolor? (Why so much pain?) José Luis Cortés
Instead of asking, “Why so much meth in the gay community?,” Cortés’s experimental film provokes the deeper question, “Why so much pain?” The film delves into the emotional and social wounds that fuel addiction and risk-taking behaviors.