Queer rapper Mykki Blanco released her music video “Hideaway” in honor of National Youth HIV/AIDS Day on Monday.
Directed by Daisy Zhou, the video interprets the stigma faced by individuals with HIV. It shows Blanco as she takes her antiviral medication before getting ready for a show. A couple is also in the room where one partner is HIV-positive and faces abuse by the partner who is HIV-negative.
Blanco is particularly passionate about the subject because she revealed on Facebook in 2011 she was HIV-positive.
“When we choose to stigmatize those living with HIV, we do a disservice to our own humanity,” Blanco says in the video’s introduction.
In an interview with W Magazine, Blanco says working on the video was “insanely synchronistic. It is really cool to create a work that has a consciousness to it—that’s not only politically relevant but relevant about a subject that people still to this day are just afraid to talk about.”
Watch the video below.
