(“Bongi” – one of the works on the exhibition)
Through Positive Eyes is a new exhibition which builds on the work of
South African photographer Gideon Mendel, harnessing the power of the arts to
banish HIV stigma, which is on at the Durban Art Gallery to coincide with
AIDS2016, the international Aids Conference taking place in Durban.
Award-winning
photographer Gideon Mendel and UCLA professor David Gere have, for the last 10
years, been building Through Positive Eyes, a
participatory photography project in which people living with HIV and AIDS
(PLWHA) share their stories in the form of photos, video, and narrative. Through
Positive Eyes features
over 100 photographs, an array of commissioned two-dimensional and sculptural
works, and live storytelling documenting the realities of individuals living
with HIV across the globe.
In the
eighteen months following the Durban opening, the exhibition will travel to the
Adler Museum of Medicine at Wits University, Johannesburg (November 1-December 31,
2016), UNISA Gallery in Pretoria (January 15-March 1, 2017), and the Iziko
Slave Lodge in Cape Town (April 1-December 31, 2017). Thereafter, it is slated
to travel to venues in Europe and the United States.
Through Positive Eyes began as a series of photographic workshops
co-directed by award-winning photo artist Gideon Mendel and the Art &
Global Health Center of the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA). Mendel is a London-based South African photographer
and AIDS activist who has been chronicling HIV and AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa since
1993. Since then his groundbreaking work on HIV and on climate change has been
widely recognized, most recently with the inaugural Pollock Prize for
Creativity from the Krasner-Pollock Foundation.
The
exhibition in its current form has been curated by David Gere (Los Angeles),
Stan Pressner (New York) and Carol Brown (Durban).
In his 2003
book, Through Positive Eyes Mendel
developed a method for interlacing images of People Living with HIV and AIDS
(PLWHA) with first-person accounts, a potent combination that served to reduce
the irrational stigma surrounding HIV. Through Positive Eyes takes Mendel’s image-and-text
concept a step further, by putting cameras into the hands of the HIV-positive
people themselves, so that they are encouraged to shape their own visual
narratives and accompanying stories. The resulting work is especially raw and
honest, revealing the deepest thoughts and feelings of PLWHA around the world.
The goal of Through Positive Eyes workshops is to empower
HIV-positive people to pursue their own artistic voice and to develop their own
individual narratives. Themes in the show include the Burden of Stigma, Alive and Well, What Makes Me Laugh, and Stories My Body Tells.
Since 2007, 122 HIV-positive people in nine major cities have taken part
in this unique initiative, contributing to an archive of over 120,000
photographs, thousands of hours of video footage, hundreds of photo-essays, and
a wide array of mini-documentaries, all available online at www.ThroughPositiveEyes.org
Workshop locations include Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg,
Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Mumbai, Bangkok, Port-au-Prince, and London. A
group of HIV-positive people from the Durban area is being convened by the AIDS
Foundation of South Africa (AFSA) just prior to the opening at Durban Art
Gallery. This group of Durban “Artivists”— artist-activists — will share their
stories live in the galleries throughout the run of the exhibition, in a
theatrical environment created by New York artist Stan Pressner.
Other Artivists contributing works to the exhibition include Adriana
Bertini (Brazil), Mandisa Dlamini (South Africa), Daniel Goldstein (United
States), Ross Levinson (United States), Gordon Mundie (United Kingdom), and
Parthiv Shah (India).
Through Positive Eyes and the activities of the UCLA Art & Global
Health Center are made possible through the generous support of the Herb Ritts
Foundation. Additional funding provided by the Electronic Theatre Controls,
Ford Foundation, Teiger Foundation, UNAIDS, UCLA AIDS Institute, Gere
Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Through Positive Eyes runs
in the Durban Art
Gallery until September 30, 2016. The Gallery is in the Durban City Hall,
entrance in Smith Street (opposite the Playhouse).
For more information contact 031 311 2264
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