Welcome to the 10th Annual POZ Awards, spotlighting the best representatives of HIV and AIDS in media and culture.
The POZ editorial staff selects the nominees, but POZ readers choose the winners.
Eligible nominees were active or were presented, published or produced between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025.
Voting is now closed.
BEST IN VISUAL ARTS
“Love Rules: The Harm Reduction Archives of Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz”
Though harm reduction is a well-known strategy in the HIV and AIDS world, the history of its development by people who use drugs, sex workers and other activists can sometimes be obscure. Enter this exhibition, on display at MOMA PS1’s Homeroom, which features photographs, publications and posters chronicling the creation of harm reduction by “those most directly impacted by the AIDS epidemic and drug-related overdoses.” Writing for Filter, critic Helen Redmond called the exhibit a “long overdue acknowledgement” of this “radical history.” She added, “More presentations of the radical, lifesaving activism of this era should be curated for the public.”
“To Love-To Die; To Fight. To Live.: Art and Activism in the Time of AIDS”
The close relationship between art and the activist response to the AIDS epidemic is well-known, but always rife for further exploration. This exhibition, taking place on the 40th anniversary of the AIDS quilt, and made in collaboration with the New York City AIDS Memorial, focuses on art as a form of survival amidst the earliest days of AIDS. Aside from displaying patches of the quilt, as well as famous posters from collectives such as Gran Fury, the exhibition also put on open-to-the-public quilt-making workshops honoring the lives of New Yorkers, including the lives of School of Visual Arts alumni.
Spurred by having to return to the online, app-fueled world of dating, David Roussève’s solo show Becoming Daddy AF connects family history, his life with HIV and the death by suicide of his former husband of 26 years to produce a story of a man “defying death, but somehow unable to unabashedly embrace life.” A melange of genre that leaps through space and time, the show tells Roussève’s story as a recently-divorced Black man living with HIV, while also wrestling with memory, the archive, legacy, fulfillment and liberation.
“Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald”
Joyce McDonald began working with clay in 1997 as a form of art therapy. This exhibition, a collaboration between Visual AIDS and the Bronx Museum, shows the clay figures she has made in the time since; an ordained minister, she says that her art is a part of ministry. Diagnosed with HIV in 1985, McDonald said she uses her art to inspire confidence in others. The exhibit includes a variety of her sculptures, from early works in clay to mixed found materials and ceramics, often featuring figures in repose or embrace.
