Shahpour Pouyan has been named as one of the five shortlisted artists to design London’s very first permanent HIV/AIDS memorial. Other shortlisted artists include Ryan Gander, Anya Gallaccio, Harold Offeh and Diana Puntar. The public monument will be located near Middlesex Hospital in London, where Princess Diana opened the U.K.’s first AIDS unit in 1987. The winning artist will be announced in the summer of 2024 and the monument will be unveiled in 2026.
The project, backed by the charity AIDS Memory UK (AMUK), has been allocated £130,000 ($165,000) by the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan from the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm. The winning proposal will be selected by a panel of 11 judges that includes physician Jane Anderson, currently chair of The National AIDS Trust; AMUK founder Ash Kotak, art historian Satish Padiyar, artist Rana Begum, theater director Neil Bartlett, and writers Jack Guinness and Olivia Laing.
