Memorializing an Artist 34 Years After He Lost His Life to AIDS

Installation view of Nicolas Moufarrege: Recognize My Sign at Queens Museum. Center: “The Fifth Day” (1980), thread and pigment on needlepoint canvas. 51 x 64 inches (Collection George Waterman III. Photo by Hai Zhang. Image courtesy the Queens Museum.)

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, and raised in Beirut before making a name as an artist in New York City in the 1980s, Nicolas Moufarrege’s first museum exhibition, Recognize My Sign, opened just last year at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston — 33 years after the artist lost his life to AIDS. Now the Queens Museum has brought his work to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where his work will be on view until February 16, 2020. To open the show, the museum is hosting a gallery talk focused on Moufarrege’s work featuring artists and curators who were friends with him before his death in 1985.

Moufarrege was known for pulling his imagery from a wide variety of influences, from Arabic calligraphy to comic-book characters like Spider-Man. The exhibition will feature “nearly 40 tapestries and embroidered paintings, as well as drawings, photographs, and primary documents,” according to the museum. The gallery talk on Sunday will feature curator Yasmin Ramirez and artists Elaine Reichek and James Romberger discussing Moufarrege’s life and work and is co-organized with the advocacy group Visual AIDS, which previously published a book about Moufarrrege’s work in 2016. The talk is free for all to attend, but just note that admission to the Queens Museum is $8 for adults. For more information, check out the Queens Museum’s site.

When: Sunday, October 27, 2019, 3 pm
Where: Queens Museum (New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens)