"Uncertain Intimacy: Sue Coe's AIDS Portfolio at Pomona Art Museum," by Janet Owen Driggs for KCET Artbound
In this context Coe's AIDS Portfolio from 1994 -- which is currently on display in Allied Against Aids at the Pomona College Museum of Art (PCMA) -- is something of an anomaly. Portraying AIDS patients and their hospital environment, the Portfolio's 11 prints occupy a less clamorous visual and emotional register than is common for Coe. Rather than use lacerating personifications to explain a reality that the artist has already digested and contextualized, their softer light and more tentative line seem to be feeling a way toward intimacy.