Durban Art Gallery

122 Faces of Through Positive Eyes, 2016. Digital composite photograph.
Artivist: Gideon Mendel (b. 1959, Johannesburg, South Africa). London, United Kingdom.

“Since 2007 I have worked with the Art & Global Health Center at the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) to develop Through Positive Eyes, a collaborative photo project with groups of HIV-positive people in key cities around the world. After many years documenting the HIV/AIDS epidemic myself, I felt that the time had come to hand over the camera to people living with the syndrome. The impulse for making this project has been our conviction that fighting stigma is crucial in this era of widespread access to anti-retroviral drugs. 122 HIV-positive individuals show their faces as a response to stigma, putting their words and images at the heart of the response to the disease. I began this project making a portrait of each participant. Along the way I realised that their self-representations, which fill the rest of this exhibition, were much more interesting to me.”

Bag of Shame, 2015. Paper, plastic, cotton thread.
Artivist: Gordon Mundie (b. 1967, Glasgow, Scotland). London, United Kingdom.

“Bag of Shame gives visual form to a collection of hurtful things that have been shouted at me in the UK. One phrase hurled by a co-worker was so offensive that my employers asked my ‘stigmatiser’ to leave. That is how bad it can be.

“Stigma is when I feel different about myself because of your feelings about my HIV. My work as an artist aims to heighten awareness of that stigma, and to influence the way you feel about people with HIV. You may be offended or uncomfortable. You might feel compassion or moved to take action. In any event, I want you to feel challenged.

“Stigma can be incredibly subtle. It surrounds us, largely unnoticeable from a distance. Look closely at the labels. If you feel uncomfortable, my job is done. That is the point.”

In Honour of Gugu Dlamini, 2016. Multimedia.
Artivist: Mandisa Dlamini (b. 1985, KwaZulu-Natal). Durban, South Africa.

“I have never considered myself to be an artist. As director of the Gugu Dlamini AIDS Foundation, I am an activist first. But for this project I have served as both an artist and an activist, or perhaps I could proudly wear the term “artivist.” The process began with me telling my mother’s story [about how she revealed her HIV status on the radio and was stoned to death by our neighbors]. Clive Read videotaped it. Then, I collaborated with curator Carol Brown to create the banners. Karla Nixon designed them. South African artist Vaughn Sadie made the light sculpture based on my description of what happened the day my mother was killed, and how we brought her back to her bed to die. Together, we have tried to tell my mother’s story in a way that is accurate and respectful, so that museum visitors would understand the bitter truth of stigma and how hurtful it can be.”

Mind Experiment #1 and #2, 2016. Latex condoms.
Artivist: Adriana Bertini (b. 1971, Porto Alegre). Sao Paulo, Brazil.

“For the past two decades, I have been creating Condom Couture—fashion made of brilliantly colored hand-dyed condoms. The idea is to represent yourself through desirable clothing, which at the most fundamental level is a way for you to wrap up and protect yourself. In the past I have focused on making condom dresses, but recently I branched out to headdresses. Hats and headdresses have been around since at least 2000 B.C., mainly to serve as protection from heat or cold, sunshine or rain drops. Taking the concept of protection still further, I have created a new kind of head accessory, part hat, part wig. I call this the Mind Experiment series, the goal of which is to ask how to change our attitudes and behavior surrounding sex. These pieces propose the importance of deep mental reflection, leading to the intense desire for change and the adoption of condom usage. The condom has to get into the head!”

Medicine Man for South Africa, 2009. Pill bottles, wire, beads.
Artivist: Daniel Goldstein (b. 1950, Mount Vernon, New York). San Francisco, United States.

“I am an artist and sculptor who has been living with HIV in the United States since 1984. Upon travelling to Durban in 2009, I became aware that the medications available in South Africa were exactly the same toxic drugs, with serious side effects, that I had taken in the 1990’s. I, meanwhile, had moved on to the new generation of less toxic antiretrovirals available to me in the U.S. I decided to create Medicine Man for South Africa, in collaboration with KwaZulu-Natal crafters living with HIV, to address this unfair situation. All the bottles in this sculpture were donated by people from South Africa, including Justice Edwin Cameron of the Constitutional Court. The coloured spikes around the figure and the beads connecting the bottles represent the side effects of these toxic drugs.”

Head Torso Hand Feet, 2016. Digital photographs on paper.
Artivist: Parthiv Shah (b. 1962, Gujarat). New Delhi, India.

“I grew up listening to lyrics by Kabir, a 15th-century Indian mystic weaver, poet, and saint, who describes the body as an ‘earthen vessel.’ ‘Listen to me, my Friend! My beloved Lord is within.’

“Digging within the Through Positive Eyes archive, I found myself thinking about Kabir on account of the recurring images of bodies, and how these images imply their own kind of story. I began to pull out photos that caught my imagination, and then to play with them, to blow up parts in order to focus on details, even when this caused the original image to be distorted in some way. Gradually, I began to see that I could organize the photos and texts around particular body parts—head, torso, hands, feet—to create a set of four companion accordion-fold books.

“As a young child, I met the artist-designers Charles and Ray Eames, who edited photographs in a similar way. Inspired by them, the idea here is simply to reflect, in the unfolding of the pages, the way we experience new things in our lives.”