‘Tree of Life’ is chosen as London’s AIDS memorial

A giant ‘symbol of life’ in the shape of a felled tree and its hollow trunk has been chosen for London’s first permanent AIDS memorial.

The design, by artist Anya Gallaccio, was commissioned from a shortlist of five and will be located on South Crescent, Store Street, in Fitzrovia.

It has a specially constructed symbolic tree trunk from which the inner rings have been extracted and displayed standing next to it in the street lined with London plane trees.

Gallaccio said: “The proposal as it is accommodates space with the intention of providing a meeting place, a heart for community generated events and oral histories. The tree is a symbol of life.

“The planes that line the street side of the crescent are all over the city, for good reason… they resist pollution. They are survivors, living in spite of their environment, a heavy but perhaps apt metaphor for those living with HIV and AIDS. Hidden in plain sight.”

Born in Scotland, Gallaccio attended art school in London at Kingston Polytechnic and Goldsmiths College and was shortlisted for contemporary art’s most prestigious prize, the Turner Prize, in 2003.

Curator Michael Morris, who sat on the selection jury, said “the expression of loss and resilience could not be clearer”.

He added: “The horizontal torso and the vertical rings that watch over it powerfully and poignantly combine to remember the AIDS crisis, creating a living place of remembrance both for the communities most directly affected by HIV and for all Londoners.”

The memorial, which will be unveiled in 2027, is close to the former Middlesex Hospital, where the UK’s first ward dedicated to the care and treatment of people affected by HIV/AIDS was established.

The Broderip Ward took its first patients in January 1987 and was in the hospital where Princess Diana was photographed shaking hands with a man with AIDS, challenging the then widespread belief that it could be transmitted by touch.

Ash Kotak, founder of Aids Memory UK, said the unveiling of the design meant the foundations had been laid for the memorial, but now fundraising was needed.

He urged “Londoners and friends of this great city to come together to raise funds and build this… a tribute to the era we are all living through, a time of HIV and AIDS, as we fight to the end They”.