Hanging Rock, from the AIDS series

After a friend’s infant contracted AIDS in 1986 from a blood transfusion, Teraoka’s work took on a much darker tone than his earlier playful commentaries on cultural clash. In the AIDS series, the disease was often personified in the form of monsters or ghosts, and contemporary figures connected to the AIDS crisis were portrayed as samurai or other types seen in 18th and 19th century Japanese prints. Here, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, a victim of the disease, battles senator Jesse Helms, in blue, who was an aggressive opponent of gay rights and AIDS research. In 1989 Helms also fought funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, in part due to its sponsorship of an exhibition featuring Mapplethorpe’s frank, homoerotic nudes.

Teraoka said about the painting, “In a famous movie about Hanging Rock (a site in Australia), young girls mysteriously vanish between the rocks … I thought Hanging Rock would be a good setting for a piece about Robert Mapplethorpe, whose photography has been so controversial for government officials. They would like to make him disappear.” In the painting, Jesse Helms is seen cutting up a scroll of the artist’s photos. The flames threatening to engulf Mapplethorpe may represent intolerance, or the disease that ultimately took his life.