Joey Terrill is a formative figure in the Los Angeles based Chicano art movement and AIDS cultural activism and is a former board member of VIVA!, the first gay and lesbian Latino art organization in Los Angeles. Painting and making art since the 1970s, Terrill has always explored the intersection of Chicano and gay male identity (where they overlap and where they clash) as a strategy for art production.
He has contributed to exhibits ranging from Art, AIDS, America that opened in Tacoma, WA ending in Chicago, Ill. to Queerly Tehuantin at the now closed Galleria de La Raza in San Francisco with works from the pre-AIDS 1970's (like Homeboy Beautiful) as well as recent self-portrait paintings and Still-Lifes with HIV medications. He seeks to engage with and add to the fermenting investigation of Queer identity found in current artistic practice.
Currently his work is featured in Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. at the Majorie Barrick Museum of Art at the University of Nevada Las Vegas until March 16, 2019
He also works as Global Director of Advocacy and Partnerships at AIDS Healthcare Foundation.