Peter Bendheim’s photograph of a loveLife billboard with the headline: ”Everyone he’s slept with, is sleeping with you.” William Kentridge’s animated film titled Tide Table. Langa Magua’s larger-than-life outdoor sculpture deliberately made to disintegrate in the weather. These are a handful of art works contributed by South Africa’s top artists for the Positive 2007 exhibition in order to draw attention to the HIV/Aids pandemic. It gives renewed meaning to the word ”positive”.
Curator Carol Brown, until recently the director of the Durban Art Gallery, always had an Aids focus in her art exhibitions. She curated Break the Silence, which gave birth to Positive 2005, Positive 2006 and now Positive 2007.
Most of the art works contain an element of red, the adopted colour for highlighting HIV/Aids issues. Dineo Bopape’s tube lights, with the text ”love conquers all”, catches most visitors’ eyes first, but it was not designed specifically for this exhibition. Brown never exhibits an artist’s work unless the artist understands exactly in what context it will be placed. She says Aids is still a sensitive issue for some artists, but Bopape agreed without reservation, saying: ”Why not? Everything is about Aids.”
Positive is a travelling exhibition, so Carol must work with a different gallery space, sometimes large or small, which brings fresh challenges to the installation. This time it is an awkward space in Grahamstown’s Albany History Museum, which she has handled well. Sometimes Brown has to find another art work to replace one that has been sold and the new owner is unable to lend, for instance when Clive van den Berg’s sculpture was sold to the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
At a time when most middle- to upper-class people’s attitudes appear immune to Aids-awareness campaigns, Brown has managed to strike a balance between awareness of the disease and active dialogue by using art as an advocacy tool, and it works. An example is Themba Shibase’s painting Fragile with a South African transport ”fragile” label stuck on it saying: ”This is not an acknowledgment of responsibility.”
Brown says: ”Gender issues are important because rural black men often refuse to wear condoms. In the traditional rural context, women have little say and are dominated by men.”
Artist Bernice Stott believes that the overlooked female condom is potentially revolutionary in its ability to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. In her Traditional Medicine and Femidoms, femidoms become a symbol of power for women. Herbs in sealed plastic strips alongside the photographs of female condoms represent 80% of the African population who rely on traditional remedies in the fight against infectious diseases.
Brown’s intention is to offer an alternative to the despair surrounding the disease by conveying a message of hope and empowerment. However, she is concerned after receiving feedback from some visitors that little hope is portrayed in the exhibition.
The Long Life Body Map project is inspired by UCT’s Memory Box project in Khayelitsha. Memory boxes are made by parents with Aids who are preparing for death so that they can leave a legacy for their children. This sounds depressing, but facilitators involved in the project realised that the people creating the body maps ”were facing the future more than the past”.
Positive 2007 addresses both genders of all races and age groups. This travelling showcase is a meaningful opportunity for South African artists to confront the themes of health, gender, sex, rebirth, regeneration and the connectedness between past and future generations.
This report was first published by Cue, the festival’s newspaper and website