Blood Equality / Shared Humanity

On view in Art@Bainbridge’s newest exhibition, Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge, is the New York–based artist’s sculpture Untitled (HULK /AIDS) (2018), which examines lifesaving science, HIV/AIDS, and identity stigmas. Eagles brings together a vintage comic book and two collection tubes that contain the blood of a gay man on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and blood from an undetectable HIV+ donor, respectively—all encapsulated in ultraviolet resin. The narrative of the comic book, The Incredible Hulk #420: In the Shadow of AIDS (1994), centers on the character Jim Wilson, an African American man dying of AIDS and friend to the Hulk—the green-skinned alter ego of Dr. Bruce Banner, who, due to exposure to gamma rays, physically transforms when under emotional duress into a creature with seemingly unlimited strength. From his hospital bed, Jim pleads for a blood transfusion, hoping the Hulk’s blood might save his life. Believing that his gamma-radiated blood could transform Jim into a destructive monster like himself, the Hulk ultimately decides not to give Jim his blood. This decision—rooted in fear, uncertainty, and love—leads to Jim’s death, leaving the moment charged with ethical complexity and sorrow.

Blood, its ability to save lives, and the interrogation of decisions about who can participate in blood donation are central themes throughout Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge. Each gallery highlights different facets of Eagles’s body of work from 2009 to 2023, presenting distinct projects and thematic chapters in which he has used blood as an artistic medium, combining it with American pop-culture ephemera and historical documents as well as utilizing new technologies to create multiple entry points into the complex and often discriminatory policy conversations surrounding blood-donation guidelines.

Eagles has been interested in the visual power of blood since the late 1990s, working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. He began by experimenting with animal blood sourced from slaughterhouses, exploring themes of corporeality, spirituality, and regeneration. Eagles has developed preservation techniques using resin to retain permanently blood’s natural colors, patterns, and textures. When lit, his works become luminous, reflecting the many layers suspended throughout the resin and thus revealing blood’s visceral properties and energy. Over the past decade, Eagles has created artworks using human blood—voluntarily donated by individuals from the LGBTQI+ community—to advocate for equality, fair blood-donation policies, and stigma reduction, and to inspire dialogue about the effects of identity-based policies.

Untitled (HULK /AIDS), like the other works in the exhibition, responds to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s blood-donation guidelines, which, at the onset of the AIDS epidemic, prevented men who have sex with men from donating blood. Due to emergency blood shortages since the 1980s, however, the policy has been revised—from a lifetime ban to a twelve-month celibacy requirement and then to a three-month requirement during the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2023 the FDA issued new guidelines for blood donation, basing eligibility on how a prospective donor answers behavior-based questions, supported by advances in HIV testing and a greater understanding of blood safety.

In his earlier photographic works, Eagles turned the human body into a site of reflection, vulnerability, and resistance. In Bloody Scotty & Nick III (2009, printed 2025), blood—ordinarily hidden beneath the skin—is projected onto the subjects, transforming their bodies into a living canvas of veins, lesions, and organic elements. Featuring crackling patterns and cellular textures, the image oscillates between the beautiful and the brutal. The couple in the photograph stand close in a state of tender intimacy. Capturing this simple pose carries weight in a culture that has historically regulated and judged same-sex touch. This photograph, alongside the others on view, insists on a different way of seeing. The projection of blood onto naked skin collapses internal and external, life and death, desire and disease. It speaks to the legacy of HIV/AIDS, recalling the stigmatized imagery of rashes and Kaposi’s sarcoma, as well as the medical gaze that rendered gay bodies suspect.

Throughout Jordan Eagles: Centrifuge, blood functions as Eagles’s core artistic material and as a record of his collaboration with those who donated it. He invites reflection on blood as a lifesaving, sustaining, and unifying human element, as well as on the ways that policies rooted in identity and bias can separate that bond.

The exhibition is made possible by the Kathleen C. Sherrerd Program Fund for American Art; the Melanie and John Clarke Exhibition Fund; the Virginia and Bagley Wright, Class of 1946, Program Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art; and generous support from contributors to the Director’s Exhibition Fund.