About the Event

At the New York City AIDS Memorial, artist Maria De Victoria presents Help Me Hold This, a site-specific performance that blurs the line between witness and participant.

For the length of a standard workday, De Victoria stands holding a single white sheet. The fabric calls to mind the hospital linens once used at St. Vincent's Hospital, on whose former grounds the Memorial now stands, as well as domestic life, burial shrouds, and the collective artmaking of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Visitors are invited to join her through a simple, direct ask: "Help me hold this."
When people choose to participate in the performance, they join the artist in holding the sheet alongside her for as long as they choose. When they step away, De Victoria continues alone. This back-and-forth, between solitary endurance and shared effort, makes the ongoing labor of care visible.

Help Me Hold This follows De Victoria's previous 24-hour performance, Singing is a Simple Act, which took place at the New York City AIDS Memorial from June 28-29, 2024. Together, these works honor the grassroots networks that held communities together through the AIDS crisis, and, in particular, the women whose contributions are too often erased: lesbians, mothers, nurses, and others who showed up when institutions didn't.

When government and healthcare systems failed those living with AIDS, many women did what feminist art pioneer Mierle Laderman Ukeles called "maintenance labor"—the exhausting, repetitive, and deeply emotional work of keeping people alive and preserving their dignity. They managed daily survival, provided hands-on care, built mutual aid networks, and led radical political advocacy, often with limited public recognition.

By taking place at the Memorial's platform at the intersection of public memory and private grief, Help Me Hold This asks for a reckoning with that history and our responsibilities to each other today.

This program is part of West Side Fest, a three-day celebration of arts and culture across Manhattan’s historic West Side, organized by the West Side Cultural Network.