When the HIV/AIDS epidemic struck the world in the early 1980s, it fundamentally changed our understanding of the body, love, sexuality and the communities that bind us together. For an entire generation, HIV/AIDS became an existential experience that left a profound mark on society, culture and art. There is a time before and after HIV/AIDS.

With Den jeg elsker (The One I Love), Arken explores for the first time the artistic response to HIV/AIDS in a Danish and broader Nordic context. The exhibition brings visibility to a significant yet previously underexplored chapter of Danish and Nordic art and cultural history, tracing its development from the artistic responses of the 1980s to the present day. The exhibition brings art into dialogue with the cultural history surrounding HIV/AIDS and explores how the epidemic was experienced, processed and represented – and how these experiences continue to resonate in art today.

Today, for many, the HIV/AIDS epidemic belongs to the past. Yet questions of stigma, illness, rights, sexuality, community and access to treatment remain highly relevant. The One I Love therefore opens up a historical space that also speaks directly to our own time – in Denmark, across the Nordic region and in a global reality where rights and communities remain under pressure.