I entered Triennale Milano expecting a familiar narrative of loss—a collection of names from the eighties, repeated so often they risk becoming symbols rather than people. But I left with a completely different feeling. Fabio Cherstich’s A Visual Diary is not a eulogy. It’s a space where love is openly expressed: tender, clear-eyed, and quietly revolutionary.

The setup is simple: a table, a stool, two projections, occasionally a turntable and the shimmer of a mirror ball. This simplicity is deceptive, as it opens a doorway. As Fabio speaks and shares images and music, New York in the 1980s comes alive with striking clarity. You can almost hear the city’s noise, the atmosphere of the clubs, the casual chatter before a song begins. It’s not the era’s clichés but its texture—the feeling of finding a place where you belong.

The work revolves around three artists whose lives were cut short by AIDS: Patrick Angus, Larry Stanton, and Darrel Ellis. Each had a unique perspective. What connects them, in Fabio’s telling, is not death but a sense of belonging. These stories aren’t about sex as spectacle; they’re about the comfort and energy of being among your own, sheltered by a fragile yet radiant community.

Patrick Angus painted hidden theaters—not just the literal stages of places like the Gaiety or the Apollo Sauna, but the invisible stage that forms when strangers share the same risks and desires. In his paintings of strip clubs and porn cinemas, the focus wasn’t nudity but the audience: clerks, dandies, the shy, the bored, businessmen with briefcases on their laps. They were together, and that togetherness was the true subject.

Fabio’s journey to understand Angus began with a reproduction seen on a phone and led him to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to the home of Betty Angus, Patrick’s mother. Drawings were pulled from under beds, paintings hung among rakes and tools in the garage. This is what real archives look like before institutions step in—private landscapes of care, preserved because someone chose not to discard anything. Betty became the guardian of her son’s memory, the quiet protector of a legacy the world had yet to appreciate. From that garage to the Whitney Museum spans decades, a journey that seems inevitable only in hindsight. One of Patrick’s drawings now hangs there, a gift from Fabio—a gesture that closes a circle of devotion between artist, mother, and keeper.

Larry Stanton’s life offers a contrast. He died in 1984, the same year Angus moved to New York. Stanton was magnetic, a portrait artist who captured faces not as symbols but as living presences. Fabio describes his homes in New York and Fire Island as social hubs with a jukebox at the center—a portrait studio disguised as life among friends. The drawings even had phone numbers on the back. The community lived in the graphite.

If Angus had Betty, Stanton had Arthur Lambert: lover, collector, custodian. Through Arthur, Stanton met David Hockney in Los Angeles in the late sixties, and through him, his work was safeguarded after his death. These aren’t just anecdotes—they’re lifelines. Without them, there would be no story to tell. The renewed interest in Stanton’s portraits today isn’t just a shift in taste; it’s a way of mending the cultural fabric, restoring what the AIDS epidemic and the art market had overlooked.

Darrel Ellis took the story in yet another direction. He projected photographs onto sculpted surfaces made of paper, plaster, and bandages, then rephotographed the distorted results. Much of his source material came from his father, Thomas Ellis.A photographer was killed by police in 1958, two months before Darrel was born. The son constructed a future from the images of a past he never knew, creating a family album that embraces both sorrow and imagination.

Portrait of Darrel Ellis by Allen Frame, copyright Allen Frame.

Ellis spent time at PS1 around the start of the eighties and worked as a guard at MoMA, just as Angus did during those same years. Two artists watching over the museum while creating their own work in their spare time. That detail stays with me: how often do we overlook the guard who might be an artist whose work will be important to us all in thirty years? Ellis’s recognition has grown in recent years, thanks to the dedication of his friend Allen Frame and the persistence of those who refused to let his images fade away. His art reminds us that every archive is also an act of resurrection.

Self-Portrait after photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, 1989. Courtesy of The Darrel Ellis Estate, Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles, and CANDICE MADEY, New York. © Darrel Ellis Estate.

Darrel Ellis © Allen Frame.

People may call A Visual Diary a lecture performance, and it is that, but the term feels too clinical. In reality, Fabio is hosting a gathering. He is more of a custodian than a lecturer. He handles the images and songs with care, knowing the material is not neutral and treating it as if on loan from the living. This attentiveness affects the audience too. You feel welcomed rather than instructed, responsible rather than simply entertained.

There’s a reason the turntable is important. A song can collapse time in a way an image cannot. Drop the needle, and you sense the atmosphere of another room. Fabio uses music as a bridge between eras, moving from disco to classical to love songs. The selections serve as dramaturgy, not just decoration. They allow the images to breathe and teach the audience to engage with the story rather than watch it from a distance.

— Lorenza Daverio

As someone who lives and works with photography, what struck me deeply was how central visual language is to this performance. The photographs and videos aren’t just supporting elements; they are its lifeblood. Fabio moves through them with the intuition of someone who knows that images only come alive when placed in relation to one another. The sequencing, the dissolves, the rhythm of projection all echo the emotional power of the slideshow—that delicate form where photography and music combine to create something greater than either. It reminded me how an image, when seen in motion and in community, ceases to be static and becomes a shared experience.

The piece never lectures, yet it is political. It reveals how easily the art world ignores what doesn’t fit its current trends. It shows how much of our cultural heritage survives because of a few people who refused to let things disappear. It honors those who kept archives on kitchen tables and under beds, and the artists who built small sanctuaries where they could be themselves when the outside world was unwelcoming.

— Clara Vannucci

I found myself grateful to the custodians. To Betty, who learned to hang her son’s paintings on clean white walls only after she was free to do so. To Arthur, who loved Larry and safeguarded his drawings until the world remembered to look again. To Allen, who ensured Darrel’s photographs continued to speak. And to Fabio, who refuses to let any of this remain private sorrow. He transforms it into public care.

When the lights came up, I felt that rare sense that art had done what it’s meant to do: make us more open, more attentive, more human. It turned remembrance into a collective act. It asked us not just to look, but to hold what we had seen.

A Visual Diary is not nostalgia. Nostalgia wants the past to remain golden and distant. Fabio brings it into the present and asks us to take responsibility for it. Archives are not objects; they are relationships. They live when someone carries them forward. Triennale presented the work in the historic CRT venue, and that setting mattered. It gave space back to tenderness, music, and memory. For a moment, the community that once existed was revived.Only in fragments was it whole again. As I left the theater, I thought: maybe this is the purpose of art—to keep love from fading into silence, to preserve memory until it becomes a part of us.

Credits
A VISUAL DIARY
A Journey into the 1980s New York Queer Art Scene
Written, directed, and designed by Fabio Cherstich
Original video design by Francesco Sileo
Dramaturgy by Anna Siccardi
Assistant director Diletta Ferruzzi
Produced by Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale
Commissioned by Triennale Milano Teatro
In collaboration with Visual Aids, NYC
Thanks to La MaMa Theatre, NYC
Next performances:
ERT Bologna, 3–7 December 2025

Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of helpful and clear FAQs about Fabio Cherstichs Visual Diary

Fabio Cherstichs Visual Diary FAQs

Beginner Definition Questions

1 What is a Visual Diary
A Visual Diary is a personal journal that primarily uses images sketches photos and color to capture ideas emotions and observations rather than relying only on written words

2 Who is Fabio Cherstich
Fabio Cherstich is an artist and creative guide who popularized a specific mindful approach to keeping a Visual Diary as a tool for selfdiscovery and creative growth

3 Do I need to be an artist to start one
Absolutely not The Visual Diary is for everyone Its about personal expression not creating perfect art The process is more important than the final product

4 Whats the main goal of keeping this diary
The main goal is to connect with your inner self process your feelings and unlock your creativity in a free nonjudgmental space

Benefits Purpose

5 What are the benefits of keeping a Visual Diary
It can help reduce stress improve selfawareness solve creative blocks document your personal journey and make you more observant of the world around you

6 How is this different from a regular journal
While a regular journal is textheavy a Visual Diary communicates through visuals first It engages a different part of your brain and can often express things words cannot

7 Can it help with creative block
Yes The act of freely playing with images and colors without pressure can bypass the inner critic and get creative ideas flowing again

Getting Started Practical Tips

8 What supplies do I need to begin
You can start with just a blank notebook and a pen Many people like to add a glue stick old magazines scissors watercolors or colored pencils but simplicity is key

9 How often should I work in my Visual Diary
Theres no strict rule It could be daily weekly or whenever you feel inspired Consistency is helpful but it should feel like a joy not a chore

10 What should I put on a page when I feel stuck
Start simple Paste a photo that inspires you scribble with a color that matches your mood write a single