Tate Modern is displaying the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt in a temporary display that is both spectacular and sobering at the same time.

The initiative stems from a Stateside project started by American activist Cleve Jones, who began to make a quilt in his backyard in 1985 as a way for him and other people to honour loved ones lost to AIDS. After Scottish activist Alastair Hume saw the quilt in San Francisco, where he also met with Jones, he returned to Edinburgh and decided to begin a UK counterpart in 1989.

Bringing the UK quilt to a public audience was instigated by writer and researcher Charlie Porter, and the display was curated by Elliot Gibbons at Tate. It stretches across the floor of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, creating an impressive sight when viewed from the mezzanine overlooking it, while the pathways between each row allows visitors to engage more closely with the quilts, and the 384 people remembered in them.

While the project comprises 42 quilts and 23 individual panels, it is known as a single quilt, a collective name signalling collective action. There are tributes to well-known figures like David Wojnarowicz, Robert Mapplethorpe and Keith Haring; acknowledgements of facilities that provided vital support, like the London Lighthouse or Edinburgh’s Milestone House – the UK’s first purpose-built AIDS hospice; and personal homages to friends and family.

Jones, who attended the Tate opening, said that while the original project is in a sense about remembrance, it is also meant to be about learnings, about power brokers not repeating the same prejudices, denial and ignorance that cost so many lives. He described it as “a weapon” in this sense.

The display is joined by a live programme across the weekend, including quilt making workshops; performances by London Gay Men’s Chorus; and screenings of There is a Light That Never Goes Out, a rediscovered documentary directed by Peter Martin about the 1994 display of the quilt in Hyde Park Corner – one of the largest showings of the quilt – in which Hume appears.

While health minister Gillian Merron commented on the government’s pledge to end new HIV transmissions in England by 2030 in a press release, Positive East executive director Mark Santos reminded the audience at the opening that Labour’s foreign aid cuts dealt a significant blow to the global fight against the disease, given the lack of access to life-saving medication in many parts of the world.

“The purpose of our partnership is to have the Quilt seen as often as possible in as many places as possible. The display in the Turbine Hall marks the largest showing of the UK Quilt in its history, reaching the biggest audience it has ever known,” said Siobhán Lanigan, a founding member of the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt Partnership. It’s a shame the quilt is on display for just a few days, however it sounds like there are ambitions to bring it to more audiences in the future.

“With every viewing, the names and the lives of all the people commemorated and all those who could not be named, are recognised, celebrated and brought out of the shadow of the stigma that is still associated with an HIV diagnosis today. Everything we can do to break down that stigma is of great value. This is one big step in that direction that can be built upon in future displays.”

The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is on display at Tate Modern until 16 June; tate.org.uk