Six Days from Forty brings together photographs, video, and books from the artist’s personal archive to revisit the loss of her brother, Marc, who died from complications from AIDS in 1996 at age 39. Lori Grinker began the work after finding the journal she kept while caring for Marc during his last days at home near the end of his life, recording their conversations.
Born in Queens and raised on Long Island, Marc moved to Manhattan in the 1970s to practice contract law. But after he was diagnosed in 1985, he relocated to Chicago to devote more time to teaching and writing. In 1990 he became a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he taught courses on appellate advocacy and sexual orientation and the law.
With experimental film, original photographs, collage, details of Marc’s notes, books and papers, this series retraces the siblings’ relationship alongside Marc’s life and work on gender identity, sexual orientation, law and the epidemiology of AIDS.