We’re People: Darryl DeAngelo Terrell and D’Angelo Lovell Williams
Born only a year apart, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell and D’Angelo Lovell Williams make work that explores Black queer experience in America today. Despite being from different parts of the U.S.—Detroit, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi, respectively—Terrell and Williams are now both based in Brooklyn, N.Y. In this conversation, they discuss how Black queer culture, HIV, and the artists who came before them have shaped their work and lives.
Blake Paskal, Visual AIDS
D’Angelo, how did you first come across Darryl’s work?
D’Angelo Lovell Williams
The first work I saw of Darryl’s were these portraits of people with flowers in their hair.
Darryl DeAngelo Terrell
That’s Hivyo Teté
DLW
Yes. Then I saw other work where you were documenting your body, as well as writing.
DDT
Yeah, I was visually dissecting my body with that work.
DLW
That is something I also like to do. Maybe not with words so much, but you were literally writing on images that you were making of yourself.
DDT
It is funny you bring that work up because I’ve been considering revisiting that approach. I’ve low-key retired that work because I’m tired of showing it. Everyone wants to show it, but they only want to show it during Pride Month.
Oftentimes when curators reach out to me about it, they don’t really seem to want to have a conversation [about] where my mind was at when making the work. I was 24 when I made that, and I’m 33 now. Sometimes they ask me, “Can we get it, but get it bigger?” I’m not about to reprint and rewrite and etch all of this shit on my body. I have one copy and that’s the one I’m going to produce. When this one copy is sold, it’s done. I’m not reproducing this shit. I don’t want to put myself through the trauma again.
It started with a question I was asked by my advisor Xaviera Simmons “What do you love about yourself?” All the things I love about myself are things I’ve been conditioned not to love about myself because they are the things that are socially feminine or for women. That question prompted me to start exploring my body, desire, and photographing myself in ways I wanted to see myself photographed in.
BP
Darryl, what was your first engagement with D’Angelo’s work?
DDT
The first time I saw your work was on Tumblr. This was the end of Tumblr. Yahoo had just bought Tumblr, and as new owners they started to remove all the porn and anything they decided seemed too much like porn. The first work I saw was of a photo of the two people kissing through durags, and that choked the shit out of me.
It felt like for the first time I was seeing this Black queer intimacy that looked like something I was familiar with. I’m from Detroit and I grew up around a whole bunch of hood niggas. I was like: Oh, wait, this feels familiar. After that, I added you on Instagram. I started stalking you, and now we’re friends.
DLW
The work that I remember posting on Tumblr was images. They were taken around Memphis, which is where I went to college. I was making separate work that I was showing in school and then going out to different neighborhoods and photographing people. A lot of the work that I was posting back then was either the Beauty King series, where I was wrapping head wraps around strangers’ heads in different places around Memphis, or portraits of people I was coming across. However, social media was not the place where I wanted people to see my work, and it still isn’t.
DDT
Honestly, same. Although I don’t want people’s first interactions with my work to be on their phones, I do find it to be still a great asset to introduce people to my work. I don’t want you to only engage with the work via social media, but I’m not mad if you do. But it is also part of the reason why I don’t post my work on social media.
BP
How do you identify yourself within your artistic career? You are both known as photographers, but your practices are more expansive than that. How do you identify yourself?
DDT
Artist, dj, curator, writer, pop culture critic, shit talker, hug giver, community maker. Those are all my titles.
DLW
That’s expansive. To me, “artist” is all encompassing. That is all I ever wanted to be.
Growing up, I didn’t know exactly what medium I wanted to work in. I grew up drawing; it was something I did daily. Then I went through performing and visual arts school for nine years. That led me to making ceramics, painting, and sculpting before I became interested in photography. I was always interested in images, but I wasn’t making them until later in high school. That opened up a whole level of freedom in quickly getting out ideas and messages visually.
I didn’t want to just pick up a camera and take photos. I wanted to make images. That is what led to really everything else that I’ve done. I identify as an artist because it’s not limiting to me.
BP
How do the places you’re from inform your work?
DDT
I’m originally from Detroit. Although I’ve also lived in Chicago and Brooklyn, Detroit is all through my practice. For instance, in my self-portraiture work, my positions, hair, makeup, nails, and costuming are heavily tied to my upbringing in Detroit. It’s heavily tied specifically to the Black women I grew up surrounded by.
DLW
Place is tricky because how I feel about where I came from is never apparent when people see Jackson, Mississippi. People have their ideas of what Jackson, Mississippi, is. I feel like the only thing about Mississippi in my work is me.
BP
Despite being rooted in different places, I see the presence of the South, and specifically Black American Southern culture come through in both of your practices.
DDT
The South definitely does show itself, but that goes back to my adoration for Detroit Black cultural production, which links back to Motown and a lot of those artists being Southern. This connects to the gospel of it all, the pageantry that is very much rooted in the South. It is something I have been really interested in investigating more just for myself, but also for my art practice.
DLW
I feel like a lot of people’s concepts of the South is formed only by what they’ve heard, and not what they’ve experienced.
The South will always be different than other places, but that isn’t necessarily bad. For instance, there are many great things that happen in the city of Jackson and in the Delta, such as art, music, and films being made there.
BP
I was curious how regionality might have shaped your ideas around HIV. So I want to talk about that a little bit. And also your thoughts on HIV/AIDS histories, art histories, particularly as Black queer artists.
DDT
I’ve always known what AIDS was from a young age. The moment I realized I was gay was around the same time I started to get teased for being gay, which was pretty young for me. Let’s be real: children are harsh. I was born in 1991, so technically I’m born during the epidemic. Being called gay or a fag and then being told I’m going to die of AIDS as early as six was really harsh for me. In addition, my mom’s best friend’s brother passed away of HIV, and one of my half-sisters also had a cousin who passed away from HIV. It has always been in the shadow for me.
Later, I was in an afterschool high school program called Dreaming while Achieving (DWA), where they taught us a lot about healthy sex practices. There wasn’t any sugarcoating, and they were realistic about it. They would say, “We’re not going to tell you to abstain from having sex until you marry, because we know that the moment you get a taste of it, you’re going to want it all the time.”
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D'Angelo Lovell Williams, Gloryhole, 2018. Courtesy of the Artist and Higher Pictures.
I don’t think it was until I was outed to my mom in ninth grade that we started to have conversations. This took place at the same time when The Oprah Winfrey Show started to have episodes with gender-variant people and those living with HIV. I remember one time where she had a young girl who was born with HIV, another time she had she had intersected people on the show. I remember My mom jokingly asked a question about my gender, based off one of Oprah’s questions from the show. This is also around the time when we found out that I was born with a hormonal embalance. That question led to conversations around HIV, and also when I started talking to boys with an interest in dating.
When I was diagnosed as HIV positive in 2014, the first person I told was my best friend, whose mom is an infectious disease nurse and researcher. I told all my close friends before I told my mom. The first thing she (my momma) said was, “Don’t tell nobody.” She had a fear of how people will treat me once they found out I was HIV positive.
I’m going to be honest: It wasn’t until March of this year that I posted publicly online that I’m HIV positive. That was my 10-year mark. It wasn’t until my solo show last year when my best friend asked me, “Does Dion have HIV? Because if Dion and Darryl occupy the same body, does Dion also have HIV?” Outside of the triptych work of me dissecting my body, I would only very subtly hint at being HIV positive. I felt very scared to be public about it. Among my friends and social group, I have no problem having these conversations because I curated a community around me that is a community of care.
BP
Thank you for your vulnerability. What about you, D’Angelo?
DLW
Growing up as a child in Jackson, I saw how people treated gay people, how they treated conversations around HIV and AIDS. It wasn’t nice. I remember seeing a news article about Magic Johnson living with HIV, and then hearing stories of family members who might’ve known someone who had it at some point. I never knew of anyone around me who might’ve been positive. My mom and grandma, who are both in my work, talked about an experience where they didn’t want to hug someone they knew had HIV. My grandma was a born-again Christian, and she would be like: If you’re gay, you’re going to hell.
I didn’t come out until grad school. In undergrad, some friends either knew or found out I was gay, or they just assumed, but I was afraid when they found out. I didn’t have sex until grad school. My body has changed many times. I grew up as a bigger person and got bullied for looking like a girl. I had long hair in braids when I was in middle school. I was always picked on for being big, looking like a girl, and being an artist who doesn’t play sports. I always felt challenged just for existing.
In grad school, when I was having my first sexual experiences, I avoided having sexual experiences with people who would have listed that they were HIV positive or undetectable on their profiles because I wasn’t educated on what undetectable was. It was just a lack of information, and then it was meeting people who were confiding in me that they were poz. That led me to growing in general because only I can dictate who I interact with, who my sexual partners are. I may not know everything, but I can’t shun or judge for something I don’t understand or know. My goal became to understand it better, not thinking that I would ever have the experience of living with HIV or being poz. The first person I ended up dating was poz, and they were very open with me. It was new for me as well. I wasn’t positive when they were.
Later, when I moved to New York, I wanted to experience more. I felt like I was open enough and comfortable enough, and had experiences with people who were positive, living with HIV, and understanding who I am as a person. Not seeing it as something limiting or something that I couldn’t live with, or live the rest of my life having. I wasn’t using condoms. I wasn’t on PrEP [Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis]. I didn’t care. Not that that is something that people do need or need to care about. For me, it was just being in a new place, finding community, and then just being in that. I was diagnosed in 2020, and I have no regrets for not taking PrEP.
DDT
Can I be honest? I contracted HIV while on PrEP.
DLW
You can’t dictate how you get it or the preventative measures that are taken for you not to. I wasn’t caring about any of that back then because, at the end of the day, that didn’t matter to me.
DDT
I didn’t know that you were a late bloomer sexually, which I think is really interesting because we’re the same age. I am truly a child of the internet. I don’t know if y’all use some of these websites in Mississippi, but I was on Crush Spot at a young age. I was too young to be on Black Gay Chat Live (BGCLive), but that is where I learned about Black queer culture and HIV outside of the afterschool programs. It was how I started to having sex outside of me hooking up with my best friend, who lived four doors down, or my next-door neighbor. My coming of age is the internet, so it’s just really interesting to hear starkly different queer coming-of-age stories.
DLW
I grew up thinking that I would never have sex. I didn’t feel desired as I was. Even when I was photographing myself in Syracuse, I was trying to make the work that was desirable or what I thought was desirable.
BP
When you decided to announce or say publicly that you were living with HIV, was that after knowing your mother told you not to tell anybody?
DDT
My family still doesn’t know.
DLW
I don’t think most of my family knows either. I told my mom.
DDT
The only one is my mom. She’s the only person.
DLW
I’m just like, it’s public information. That is all I need to do. I don’t feel like I need to do anything, need to tell anyone. When I did tell my mom, it was basically through this article in The New York Times, where I mentioned that I have it.
The article included an image of me and my grandma. I discussed the need to hear from the perspectives of Black queer people, including those living with HIV. After that came out, I sent it to my mom, and she called me to ask.
DDT
That’s brave of you because clearly it took me 10 years to be public about it.
DLW
The stigmas are still there, just hidden. That keeps conversation around health from happening.
DDT
There was a thread on Twitter on World AIDS Day last December where Black men were posting a picture of themselves smiling, saying how many years undetectable they are and what they’re doing with their life. I kept seeing it and kept seeing it. It made my heart heavy, and I really wanted to start being more open and public about my status. I don’t know why it’s easier for me to be open on Twitter. I kept seeing all these threads, including ones by Danez Smith a, writer I highly respect. It made me say, “You know what? Fuck it. I’m 10 years positive, nine-and-a-half years undetectable, 32 years old, living in New York, living my dream.” That is when I started to be open publicly about the entirety of my life.
DLW
I love that. When I ended up having the conversation with my mom, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?” I didn’t feel the need to do that, just like I didn’t tell her that I was gay straight out. My dad actually had always prodded a little to find out. He didn’t ever specifically ask me if I was gay or not. He just tried to hook me up with women, but he thought I had a boyfriend in college even though that didn’t happen until grad school.
Today I am a person who does the work of trying to destigmatize and have no shame. At the end of the day, life is too short for me to have any stigma play a part in my life. My work focuses on presenting Black people who are queer, possibly living with HIV. We’re just people.
BP
As artists looking at HIV and AIDS through the lens of art and cultural production, has there been anything that has inspired you? Or anything that you would like to see that you don’t?
DDT
The first artist I saw who I knew had HIV that made my cry was Kia LaBeija. It was the photo of her on the medical bed while wearing her prom dress. That photo ripped me to shreds. The photo of her in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. I’m such a fan of hers. Also the film work of Marlon Riggs, specifically Tongues Untied. The writings of Joseph Beam and Essex Hemphill. The music of Sylvester.
But I want to see more heavier-bodied Black queer people documenting their bodies, having conversations about desire, being more bold in their conversations around their HIV status. I told myself, now that I’ve reached my ten year mark, I’m going to start being more unapologetic about it. There’s a lot of: If I don’t see, I’m trying to make myself.
As I’m talking, my mind keeps going back to Kia LaBeija. Specifically, that photo of her in the red prom dress.
DLW
Her being someone who was born with HIV. I had a studio visit with her, and she was showing us all this documentation. It was a fully documented life from as early as her birth. She wasn’t the first artist I knew about with HIV. I can’t even remember who that was. There was Mapplethorpe, but his [HIV status] put a lot of unwanted conversations about Black people’s experience during the AIDS pandemic.
Once I was diagnosed, my work specifically wasn’t about me living with HIV, and it’s still not. That is just a part of me. A few months after I was diagnosed, that’s when I announced that I was undetectable living with HIV. I was seeing Marlon Riggs and Isaac Julian films. The work of people who lived through the epidemic and are still making work inspired me to continue to just exist.
DDT
Another moment for me was seeing a big exhibition in Chicago through the Alphawood Foundation called Arts AIDS America that included films by Black queer artists and filmmakers who were HIV positive. It included a Kalup Linzy video, the Lollipop video, which I thought was fucking hilarious. They also had a piece of the AIDS Quilt and Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s beaded curtains work. I remember walking through the curtains and thinking: Wow, these feel heavy.
There isn’t a canon for Black queer art about HIV, but we stand on the backs of people who passed during the HIV epidemic. We also stand on the backs of a lot of elders who did not live with HIV, who weren’t queer, but influenced everything we do. We are also all children of artists like Lyle Ashton Harris and Carrie Mae Weems, who made work that was very challenging and really forced us to think about power. It forced us to think about our positionality in the world. I always think about us being the start of a new type of canon.▪︎
