Here’s a view of our latest exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art, Duty of Care: Part One. It shows a controversial United Colors of Benneton ad from 1992, reproduced billboard scale. (I’m old, so I remember how edgy the ad was when it first came out.) Here, it’s accompanied by Michael Parekowhai’s 1994 sculpture Acts II on loan from Queensland Art Gallery. Its title refers to the The Acts of the Apostles from the Bible.

Benneton is an Italian knitwear brand. In the 1990s, it courted controversy with its polarising ad campaigns drawing on hot-button political issues. Its art director Oliviero Toscani often made his ads using found press images, never showing the product. By aligning itself with urgent social issues and humanitarian crises, the brand pioneered corporate virtue signalling, but also opened itself up to criticism for exploiting pain and suffering to sell sweaters. Many publications chose not to run the ads. At the time, the Benetton campaigns were widely discussed in the art world; they were part of the art discussion.

This particular ad shows a Christ-like David Kirby dying from AIDS in Ohio. It is a classic care image, showing parents tending to their dying son. The photographer and the family agreed to let Benetton use the image, to raise AIDS awareness. The original photo was in black and white, but has been coloured to give it a nostalgic, Catholic-kitsch feel. The scene recalls images of the deposition, the pieta—Christ with mourners. In a painting in the background, we can see caring Christ-like hands reaching down over the scene.

It’s a reminder of how much Christianity informs Western ideas of care. 
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