Category: Archive

My art practice has always been tied into what is happening around me. I am constantly seeing and hearing things that really need to be manifested as visual. In any given day I probably get 30 ideas for pieces.

That’s the easy part but what’s more difficult is trying to decipher if it merits the attention and energy I will would put into it.

I used to kind of flip around from concept to idea to concept, but now I tend to work longer and more intensely with one to three areas at a time. Right now, my focus is on disenfranchised older women, rage, and always, some concept of beauty. Generally this manifests as nature.

I am trying to make better sense of the world as she spins around. I really don’t care much to make art without a clear concept. That bores me. Some is mind expanding and profound or quiet and subtle, like the ways that fireflies twinkle and glow in the dark grasses. All of it contains a concept or truth or very subtle energy that I want to make known.

Art is something I do for me, to make moving through life more conscious and to create understandings or revelations for viewers. Much of what I see around me is slightly below the surface. The universe has an undercurrent of energy, be that rage or pain or tenderness and joy. I want to keep my eyes open to the undercurrent. It’s a way of moving around and always trying to fully engage my eyes and senses Things capture my attention and I become frozen. It’s as if I am suddenly in that moment becoming a connection to what I see. I love that state, being completely mesmerized by some person or words as they speak or grass blowing around or a weird spot on the concrete.

I find my life as a creative person very fulfilling and I know that it comes from a huge drive to communicate. Communication is the key to my work’s success and my life’s happiness. When I make art that makes people see or feel something new or strange or beautiful I have succeeded. And I have some compulsion to point out  the more absurd thing people in power decide to put on the rest of us. I used that way of working quite a lot when I first started making art about AIDS. Some of it was purely personal feelings driven and some of it was social commentary.

Making art is as important to me as breathing or eating or talking. I couldn’t function in this world without using this gift. It’s how I have learned to contemplate reality, to make sense of the things around me. I read a line recently that talked about someone whose friends were retiring. His response was that he would be working through lunch on the day of his funeral. That’s pretty much how I feel about making art. Got to do it til I die.

Written by Nic Holas for The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism

“Build bridges with groups made invisible to society because of fear, phobia, racism, discrimination and stigma. Trans sex workers of colour are the most vulnerable and least consulted. Building bridges means sitting at the table when decisions are made.”

Those are the words of Dinah de Riquet-Bons, who this week should need no introduction. Any AIDS 2018 delegate at the Monday night opening ceremony would not be able to forget her opening address, alongside Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Sigrid Kaag. So impressive, so moving, was de Riquet-Bons that Kaag implored her to commence a career in politics, telling her “need more women like you.”

Dinah de Riquet-Bons, of course, is already in politics. She is a trans woman living with HIV, and a sex worker. Her involvement in these communities is as personal as it is political, as she sits on the board of directors of PROUD the union of Dutch sex workers, and she is also the co-chair of Transgender Europe. 

Dinah has been living with HIV since 1991, making her not only an openly HIV+ sex worker (relatively uncommon, given the dangers of living openly as poz and a sex worker, let alone the inherent dangers associated with living/walking/existing as trans) but also a long-term HIV survivor. Being in politics is stitched into the fabric of her identity. 

So too, is being an artist. Dinah is a painter, initially working in landscapes and moving into broader abstract pieces. It is her move to portraiture though, that is the centre of our all-too-brief conversation. 

That conversation took place in the Sex Worker Networking Zone in the global village. Cleary being pulled in numerous directions by fans and fellow sex workers, all immensely proud of her incredible performance the night before on the main stage of the conference, Dinah could still zero in on our conversation. 

Whilst travelling through South Africa in 2004, Dinah was staying with some fellow sex workers and was struck by “the strength and beauty” of these women. At the same time, Dinah found herself observing beauty and strength in the clients who passed through the door to visit her new friends. 

Stuck in that in-between place travellers in familiar contexts sometimes find themselves, Dinah was able to translate these reflections of beauty and strength into a series of portraits.

When it came time to leave South Africa, there was no way Dinah could take this portrait series with her on her travels, and more than that, she wanted to leave her artistic impressions of her friends (workers, and their clients) so that they might do with them what they wish. 

Some of the women went on to sell their portraits, allowing Dinah’s gift to translate into necessary monetary relief. Others kept them as reminders of the strength and beauty their visiting friend saw in them. Many of the sex workers Dinah painted were also living with HIV, and she ends our conversation by acknowledging that over the last 14 years since she visited, many of them are no longer alive.

When we think about the political nature of our art, we perhaps rest on the idea that its politics is found in its urgency, in its righteous anger, its call to action to create a better world. 

When our lives are endlessly political, through the sheer act of existing outside of the frame of what the oppressor deems acceptable, the art we create in response must, at times, reflect beauty. Chatting with Dinah, whose various intersecting identities are always measured in stark contrast against whoever shares the stage with her (as opposed to vice versa), I am reminded of that pursuit of beauty. 

Dinah’s story reminded me of a moment between AIDS artist David Wojnarowicz and Zoe Leonard, recorded lovingly in Cynthia Carr’s excellent biography, Fire in the Belly. 

Zoe wanted to show Davis her recent work, a series of photos of clouds. She confessed to him, known for his incendiary, urgent work, that she felt a little foolish capturing lovely photos of a cloud. 

David told her that her photos were beautiful, and “that’s what we are fighting for. We’re being angry and complaining because we have to, but where we want to go is back to beauty. If you let go of that, we don’t have anywhere to go.“

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The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism is a limited edition art newspaper focusing on global grassroots HIV art and cultural production. Artists have and continue to play a fundamental role in shaping broader societal understandings of HIV and working within communities that are most impacted by the virus: queer and trans people, people who use drugs, sex workers, people of colour, and indigenous peoples. Together we reflect the immediacy and urgency of global HIV/AIDS dialogues as well as their historical continuities.

The HIV Howler is a forum for dialogue, a demand for aesthetic self-determination, a response to tokenism, and a guide to navigating the vibrational ambiguities between policy, pathology, and community.

Publishers + Editors

Anthea Black and Jessica Whitbread

Editorial Advisory Committee 

Anthea Black, Theodore Kerr, Charles Long, Mikiki, Darien Taylor, L’Orangelis Thomas, and Jessica Whitbread.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Toronto Arts Council. 

L’Orangelis Thomas Negron
January 31st
San Juan, Puerto Rico

Lo más práctico que aprendí del amor, fue durante el proceso de sanación de la última depresión que sentí después de verano. El proceso de la sanación es, para mi, un ciclo de apoderamiento sobre conciencias, herramientas, narrativas y poderes, que nos mueve de un punto a otro, para recordar sin dolor, más con aprendizaje. En aquel momento varias cosas se entrelazaban; las muy personales, los asuntos políticos y de activismo, la situación por la que cruza el país, y aquellas más espirituales y de transiciones que no siempre una entiende. El proceso de salir de ahí, fue un trabajo arduo, de estar constantemente presente en mi, ser paciente conmigo misma, darme el permiso de sentir lo que tuviese que sentir para moverme de punto “A” a punto “B”, escoger en qué cosas, momentos y personas iba a poner mi energía, entre otras.

Algo que no había estado manejando bien, era el tiempo y energía que le dedicaba a los proyectos, sin contar con una válvula de escape, y es que pensando en el “amor”, una ama y se apasiona por las luchas, los proyectos y el activismo, pero si no dirige bien esa energía, puede terminar siendo bieagotador, sobre todo, cuando tus necesidades básicas no están cubiertas. Ese agotamiento llega al punto del estrés, y cuando es el estrés lo que te empuja por mucho tiempo, genera la quemazón, y la quemazón trae consigo desesperanza.

Más allá del apoyo psicológico, estar bien física, emocional y espiritualmente, requiere de un proceso constante de poder detenerse, mirarse, evaluar lo que funcionó, lo que nó, e identificar estrategias que breguen en las distintas partes del proceso. Es vital las redes de apoyo, que no tienen que ser muy grandes si son bien sólidas, con la que se pueda contar de maneras bien concretas. Pudiésemos saber que hay mucha gente que “está aquí para ti”, pero al final del día, una pequeña acción es más valiosa que una gran intención, y no siempre nuestras redes de apoyo saben que requerimos de ellas, pues muchas veces, ni nosotras mismas lo podemos apalabrar. Por tal razón, siempre es bueno tener una diversidad, clave, de apoyo que pueda acompañarnos en las distintas partes del proceso, no solo porque todas tenemos áreas fuertes y áreas débiles, sino también porque evitamos el apego y el agotamiento de nuestra red de apoyo.

Que mis procesos apoyen los procesos de quienes me acompañan, cuando no tengo más que ofrecer, por eso, de todas las lecciones aprendidas, aquí he podido apalabrar algunas de ellas en los últimos meses, que ya venía publicando por ahí en las redes. Ojalá vengan más por ahí:

1. Observarme. Significa reconocer la persona que soy en ese momento y redirigir la
   energía que me quede, en la persona quien quiero ser, teniendo la conciencia, que tanto la actual como la futura serán solo por un tiempo. En esa “redirección de energía”, saber que a veces solo se puede recibir, y no se tiene la energía para dar, y que eso no está mal.
   
2. Paciencia con misma. Recordar, cuando los pinchazos llegan al corazón, que sentirme mejor tomará el tiempo que tenga que tomar. No adelantarse al proceso, un día a la vez.
3. El río y la mar sanan. El tiempo de calidad con quienes están y el morirsoñando, también. Identificar actividades concretas que te desconectan para reconectar, que te hacen sentir útil y que aprendes, y que te consientes (sin explotar el bolsillo). Trabajar con las manos (pintar, coser, sembrar, escribir), para mantenerse enfocada y crear las rutinas de autocuido.
4. Autocuido como cultura y rutina, no como remedio. La manera en la que vivimos nos obliga cada vez más a invertir nuestro tiempo en cosas que no necesariamente deseamos ó como deseamos, lo que nos resta poder, por lo tanto a abandonar prácticas que nos traen bienestar. En adición a que muchas veces en los espacios de lucha, en la urgencia de las cosas, el autocuido puede ser problemático. Modificar actividades para vincularlas con prácticas de autocuido puede funcionar. Por ejemplo, para quienes toman café cada mañana, en vez de comprar en la calle, hacer el ejercicio de hacerlo y tomarlo sentada en casa. Cuando hacer y tomar café sentada en casa sea rutina, en ese espacio agrega un libro. Esto, además de ahorrarte algún dinero, te obliga a tener un espacio de tranquilidad y desconexión en la mañana, tener la lectura como práctica de autocuido.
5. Saber cuando retirarse. Estar clara en las maneras en las que no me quiero sentir, y por mas que practique el sentirme cómoda dentro de la incomodidad, no forzarme a permanecer en posiciones/espacios en los que realmente no deseo estar, eso me hace mas fiel a mi.
6. Más que regañarme, organizarme. Si ya una está en un mal momento, además de los regueros que se forman y las maneras en la que nos descuidamos, date cuenta cuando te autosaboteas. Es super entendible querer ser disciplinada en un momento difícil, pues no queremos perder aún más el control (recordar punto 2), pero pudiese aportar más al proceso organizarse, prácticamente con libreta y calendario de escritorio.
7. Distancia, y si es necesario, ruptura. Aún no se si es posible establecer distancia emocional sin la física, pero sí que poco a poco es posible llenar esa distancia con la coneccion con misma, pues siempre que se desconecta, se reconecta, solo que con otra cosa. Salir del espacio/área periódicamente, desplazarse sin expectativa pero abierta a posibilidades nuevas y a la posibilidad de que la distancia no es suficiente. Aquí, no sentirme mal cuando no sincronizo con personas queridas, y reconocer lo que se pierde en el proceso y lo que se recupera.
8. Presente es la manera más valiosa de ESTAR, y en la práctica del desapego, está el NO sentirme mal por escoger NO ESTAR. Las veces que escogí el no estar (de alguna
   manera), escogí SÍ ESTAR pero en otra parte… o por lo menos con misma que es lo más importante. Pero presente nunca dejé de estar.
   

Estar y ser presente. Salud mental como fortaleza social, salud física como herramienta de lucha y salud espiritual como reconocimiento de misma y sanación constante. Proyectos colectivos e individuales concentrados para que sean efectivos y transformadores. Redirigir la energía a las esenciales que están, para no gastarla con quienes nó… Mis prioridades, para que este año baje la cantidad y aumente la calidad, ahí está la abundancia. Porque el proceso no es simple ni lineal, pero regresarse por otros caminos y vías casi siempre es chulo, y si de camino soy capaz de hacer hogar a donde, y a quien vaya, mejor!!!

For more than Thirty years, 

The same doors swing open,

While rusty ones slam shut.

I am and have been HIV-positive 11,000 days.

Why is this virus different than a cold virus? 

Why do rules bar me from certain pleasures?

What difference did it ever make to most people?

How come the world forgot to set off fireworks

The night I discovered that I was no longer infectious? 

No longer able to transmit, this virus?

Even if we both lie in warm pools of shared blood, 

After a car fatal wreck,

You would die negative.

And I would still be positive.

Is that really a change in the past thirty years?

Would your reception at the morgue be the same as mine?

Thirty years ago, 

The first night I made love,

Days and weeks and months 

After hiding my infection,

I cried – Joy and fear.

To be held, accepted as normal, 

But never quite so.

Worried about you – and this virus.

Could you become more intimate with it,

Than with me?

Today, I lean into bliss, 

Set my sails billowing, in the winds,

Of change.

We know, that loving is harmless –

Who ever intended to kill a loved one? 

Except in Shakespeare, where

Emotions run high, 

Jealousy, rage, envy, resentment.

Where all harm always was, is and will be.

It was never our blood.

We are battered by words,

Words we can’t forget,

“How did you …?” 

STOP!

“You didn’t take care …” 

STOP!

“I love you, but …” 

STOP!

“We had unprotected sex once …” 

STOP!

More than Thirty years ago

Overtaken by events

I transformed from one

Who knew so little,

To one who knows,

Knows enough to keep asking questions.

When I work among women,

When I use empty pill bottles to shift thoughts,

When I listen to our stories,

I know that we’ve all had HIV

For many more than thirty years.

We are all the women who are violated.

We are all the men who do the raping.

We are all blessed, and cursed with human bodies,

Human minds, and human needs.

The moonlight is ours to share,

Should we care enough to bear witness

To our own inner lives? 

Would it, could it, set the stigma free?

Or will we continue to knock on the same rusty doors 

And expect a different reception? 

By Wanda Hernandez Parks

Chair on the board of Directors of Vocal-NY, cofounder of the Women Empowerment Art Therapy group, with Shirlene Cooper. I have encountered many great organizations, but only one connects art and activism. I became a member of Visual AIDS in 2014, when I attended the Love Positive Women event. I immediately fell in love with Visual AIDS and their mission and I am taking in every opportunity I can to leave a legacy behind.

I didn’t even think of being considered an artist by just making and painting crazy things. I love to create things, write poetry it keeps me relaxed, mentally and spiritually grounded. Not only is art fun and expressive, it allows me to let go and let my art open the door for dialogue. Art allows me to see first-hand beauty develop right before your very eyes. 

I have learned to sketch, color, draw, put things together and learned how to create beautiful colors schemes and shades. I have learned to share any and all knowledge with others who are not aware how, where and what they can do. 

Art brings together talented artist including myself, it allows me as an artist to be a part of the artistic community, unlocking dormant files and merging the past and present. Incorporating the two has a huge impact on society and my personal self. My work and that of other artist before me whose work is hidden from within. Art allows me to come forward and use yet another skill, art brings me joy. It soothes, calms and up lifts me. It inspires joy to physically have something you created, be a part of history is surreal. A piece of me something someone will cherish for eternity

Let’s not forget all the wonderful individuals I meet along the way, domestically and internationally. Whose stories connect the absence of a male figure in the home, single women man’s role. The streets are a jungle, every day I learn something new, things I see keep me in the loop and my inspiration kicks into mode.  I write or I draw, it all depends on how my spirit flows. There are many talented people in the streets of New York, many of our brothers and sisters behind the walls, women in crisis incarcerated souls, art brings out talent they didn’t know.  I have seen the talent I have witnessed the flows that keep the best artist from coming forth. In shadow counting let not exclude the homeless many great talents in the streets has fallen.

I am extremely excited to have entered the wonderful world of artistry it not only has broaden my horizons it makes my life colorful.  These days I strive to unlock others creative self as well so we can heal together.

.

It is nothing new that there is a project of extermination on course, it did not begin yesterday and it will not end tomorrow… a project that aims at profit and that is managed by the market… In which some bodies are more “dieable” than others. The subject with rights is the cis-hetero-white man, and what is left for everything else that does not fit into this, is the enemy’s criminal law. And we are the enemy.

It is terrifying to face the fact that the code of development also encompasses human development, that is, there are projects being tested in the pursuit of enhancing our humanity as much as possible, even arriving at a new species: trans-humans. It sounds like science fiction, but, in technological advancement, there is the management of populations’ varieties and the possibility of discarding, be it through the selection of trisomic embryos or through theriomorphic ways (a hybridization with natural elements) or even “cyborgization” (a hybridization with artificial elements). They are discarding, through scientific means, races deemed as undesirable. 

Behind discourses of world peace and sustainable development, what we have is the refining of control and the subordination of life in the hands of death, in function of racial determinisms that favor profit and the accumulation of very few. “Race and racism do not belong, however, only in the past. They also have a future, especially in a context in which the possibility of transforming live beings and of creating mutant species no longer emanates only from science fiction.” (MBEMBE, 2018)…

So many concerns to ultimately arrive at no answer. We do not have a program or solutions, but allow me here to make a cheesy affirmation, the only one that I can make at the moment: In the face of the current scenario; of the war machines and the refinement of death technologies, of the supreme power that dictates who lives and who dies, at the refinement of racial necrocapitalism, of everything that destroys us as humans, builds us as enemies, surrounds and kills us… In the face of all of this, all we have left is Love. What is left for us is to Love. That’s right… You can laugh, but do not discredit it!

The Word “love” was contaminated during the 17th Century due to romanticism, assisted by the Christian Church for thousands of years… I am not talking about this love. It is about the necessity of recognizing ourselves in each other’s gaze, over this ground over which so many of ours bleed: indigenous and black people! Rescuing and recognizing our history! I understand the fragments that constitute us today… With this we articulate ourselves as a whole, in a fluid, mobile set… In a network. It was this that we had to perceive (and understand that “to perceive” means to understand through the senses) within this project of civilization, we perceive what our elders have already known for a long time… It was in the visceral experience of life, in our days, and in the succession of meetings, and before this entire machinery of necropolitcs that progressively removes from us each and any point of support, that we wake up to the fact of our collective organization, materially and politically, inasmuch as it also means organizing singularly, existentially, and sensitively.

It was necessary to understand that it will not be in Western institutions, built by whiteness and for whiteness, that we will change something. The recipe of Capital is that of individualism, that is, they may even give us something, as it distances us from one another. Loving is what allows us to survive, not in the sense of staying alive, but in the sense of getting to kill that which subjugates and oppresses us. Whether they are ideas, or men.

Feeling, listening, seeing… They are not faculties that are politically indifferent or equally shared. Our ancestors know well how to use affection in political strategies, and it is in this ancestral rescue that I say, without fear or shame, that our only way out is to truly organize ourselves, which is not any different than to Love! It is necessary to establish a constant and generous debate… In our weakness resides dispersion, and those who control us want our death. So, what is left for us is to develop the art of talking amongst the silenced… Understanding that a state of debate like this can only gain the center through the periphery, where the moment is confined to, through an offensive of sensibility, in the planes of perceptions, and not in the discourse. To speak to bodies, and not rationality (oh! Such white reason, born in white greece)… To make sense… to feel… to be felt…

This organization is not for 2030, it is for now. The times of hope, of waiting, they are over… No more ado, when are we really going to take what is ours?

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SOBRE AMOR
.
Não é novidade alguma que existe um projeto de extermínio em curso, não começou ontem e não acaba amanhã… um projeto que visa o lucro e que é gerenciado pelo mercado… Onde alguns corpos são mais morríveis que outros. O sujeito de direito é um homem cis-hétero-branco, para tudo o que não se encaixa nisso resta o direito penal do inimigo. E nós somos o inimigo.

É assustador nos deparar com o fato de que na chave do desenvolvimento também se compreende um desenvolvimento humano, ou seja, projetos estão sendo testados no sentido de aperfeiçoar o máximo possível de nossa humanidade, atingindo inclusive uma nova espécie: os trans-humanos. Parece ficção científica mas, no avanço tecnológico, existem o manejo das variedades populacionais e a possibilidade de descarte, seja por meio de seleção de embriões trissômicos ou pelas vias de teriomórfica (hibridação com elementos naturais) ou mesmo de “ciborguização” (a hibridação com elementos artificiais), estão descartando, por intermédio da ciência, as raças consideradas indesejáveis.

Por trás dos discursos sobre  a paz mundial e o desenvolvimento sustentável, o que se tem é o refinamento  do controle e a subordinação da vida em poder da morte, em função de determinismos raciais a favor do lucro e da acumulação de pouquíssimos. “Raça e racismo não pertencem, portanto, somente ao passado. Têm também um futuro, especialmente num contexto em que a possibilidade de transformar os seres vivos e de criar espécies mutantes já não emana somente da ficção científica” (MBEMBE, 2018)…

Tantas inquietações para nenhuma resposta. Não temos programa ou soluções, mas permitam-me aqui uma afirmação piegas, é a única que consigo fazer no momento: Diante de atual cenário; das máquinas de guerra e do refinamento das tecnologias de morte, do poder supremo que dita quem vive e quem morre, no refinamento do necrocapitalismo racial, de tudo o que nos destrói como humanos, nos constrói como inimigos, nos cercam e nos matam… frente à isso tudo, o que nos sobra é o Amor.O que nos resta é Amar. Pois é… Podem rir, mas não desacredita não!

A Palavra “amor” passou por uma contaminação durante o séc XVII com o romantismo, e auxiliada pelos tantos mil anos de igreja cristã… Não é desse amor que estou falando. É da necessidade de nos reconhecermos, um no olhar do outro, sob esse chão que tantos dos nossos sangraram: índios e negros! Resgatar e (re)conhecer nossa história! Entendendo os fragmentos que hoje nos constituem… Com isso nos articulamos em um todo, num conjunto fluido, móvel… Em rede. Foi isso que nós tivemos que perceber (e entenda que “perceber” é compreender através dos sentidos) em meio a esse projeto civilizatório, percebemos algo que nossos mais velhos já sabem a muito tempo… Foi na experiência visceral da vida, em nossos dias, e na sucessão dos encontros, e diante de todo esse maquinário da necropolítica que nos retira progressivamente todo e qualquer ponto de apoio, acordamos para o fato de nos organizarmos coletivamente, material e politicamente, na medida em que isso significa também organizar-se singular, existencial e sensivelmente.

Foi preciso compreender que não será dentro das instituições ocidentais, construídas pela branquitude para a branquitude, que mudaremos algo. A receita do Capital é a do individualismo, ou seja, podem até nos dar algo, na medida em que nos distancia uns dos outros. Amar é o que nos permite sobreviver, não no sentido de ficar vivo, mas no sentido de conseguir matar aquilo que nos subjuga e nos oprime. Sejam ideias, ou homens.

Sentir, escutar, ver… Não são faculdades politicamente indiferentes nem equitativamente repartidas. Nossos antepassados sabiam bem utilizar os afetos nas estratégias políticas, e é nesse resgate ancestral que digo sem receio ou vergonha, de que nossa única saída é nos organizarmos verdadeiramente, e isso não é outra coisa se não Amar! É preciso que estabeleçamos um debate constante e generoso… Pois nossa fraqueza reside na dispersão, e quem nos controla quer a nossa morte. Assim, o que nos resta é desenvolvermos a arte da conversa entre silenciados… Entendendo que um estado de debate como esse só pode ganhar o centro desde a periferia, onde o momento está confinado, por meio de uma ofensiva por parte da sensibilidade, nos planos das percepções, e não do discurso. Falarmos aos corpos, e não a racionalidade (ah! A razão tão branca, nascida na branca grécia)… Fazer sentido… sentir… ser sentido…

Essa organização não é para 2030, é para agora. Os tempos de esperança, de espera, acabaram… Sem mais delongas, quando mesmo vamos tomar o que é nosso?

Written by Jessica Whitbread for The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism

In 2012, Olive Edwards supported the Jamaican Community of Positive Women (JCW+) in establishing a quilting club to support women living with HIV to engage in dialogue about their trauma in relation to HIV. In 2016, this arts based method for establishing peer to peer connections was developed into a 2 day workshop to enable for the process to be shared and replicated in three other countries in the Caribbean region (Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tabago). 

Olive: I used to do dress making. I love the way that clothes look on people. Now that I don’t have to do it for a living, I am interested in the fabric and how to work with it. When I was sewing, I actually resented it because I was working instead of going to school and getting an education. I was working and having to raise children at a young age. 

Twenty years ago the AIDS quilt came to Jamaica and we had so much stigma in the country around the quilt and AIDS. That quilt was about death and those who had died. When we started to do the quilts in JCW+, women were scared and didn’t want to talk about death. So we just started talking about the women’s lives and from this we realized that women wanted to celebrate the lives that they had — not death. 

We work with diverse groups to start conversations about difficult issues. The process is always similar, it begins with the conversations that are happening while we are working and preparing to sew together. We use symbols instead of words often because it helps us talk through our stories. Lots of the stories of our community deal with the violence that we experience as women living with HIV and from our families. The butterflies are about freedom and empowerment for example — in our community we understand our symbols and use it as a code to talk about hard things. 

A lot of the women like to work in the group, because if they go home, they have to explain the process and the ideas to their family. We try to use quilt making to move women living with HIV to work through their thoughts and support them to build community and disclose to their families. 

These quilts are all made by the women. Sometimes we do collective quilts like our Caribbean quilt which touches our four community partners. These are really powerful. Working on these we acquire some appreciation about our different skills that we all bring to our collaborations. Our understanding of what a quilt is and what it should look like or be about is challenged. For me I do it for the therapy of it. Sometimes people think it is going to be easy to do. But you have to go deep in yourself to feel your message and then the patience to create and finish it. Its healing. 

We were inspired by a quilt in Russian that we had no idea what it said but we felt the meaning that came to Jamaica as part of LOVE POSITIVE WOMEN and we wanted to have more people see our quilts around the world. So we could share stories and be in solidarity with our sisters globally. 

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The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism is a limited edition art newspaper focusing on global grassroots HIV art and cultural production. Artists have and continue to play a fundamental role in shaping broader societal understandings of HIV and working within communities that are most impacted by the virus: queer and trans people, people who use drugs, sex workers, people of colour, and indigenous peoples. Together we reflect the immediacy and urgency of global HIV/AIDS dialogues as well as their historical continuities.

The HIV Howler is a forum for dialogue, a demand for aesthetic self-determination, a response to tokenism, and a guide to navigating the vibrational ambiguities between policy, pathology, and community.

Publishers + Editors

Anthea Black and Jessica Whitbread

Editorial Advisory Committee 

Anthea Black, Theodore Kerr, Charles Long, Mikiki, Darien Taylor, L’Orangelis Thomas, and Jessica Whitbread.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Toronto Arts Council. 

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The definition of an artist collective is, an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together to achieve a common objective, this is also the definition of “Catwalk4power”. 

That most of the women involved would not describe themselves as artists or link the development of the most “empowering evening ever” to a shared creative process, is exactly why it worked.

Catwalk4power was ignited by the spark “We want to make women visible, how about a fashion show?” and with each contribution, suggestion and inspiration it has grown into a fierce fire and a force for positive engagement. Starting with a focus on what strengths women had, meant existing skills were realised and honed, and leaders allowed to emerge. Everyone involved had a stake in the project, and there wasn’t really a plan, it just grew organically, there was no right or wrong way to do anything, we just did it.

“It was the space, the opportunity to explore, I would not have thought I could do that, be artistic, but as I saw other women make things, I thought OK I’ll give it a go, I surprised myself”. This is how the first workshop worked. Artists Donna and Mare from ACT Up London demonstrated how to make necklaces, beads and bangles and women were given the opportunity and tools to simply make stuff.

You could just do anything, there were no expectations, you came and played, there were themes and common ideas, but it was also very fluid, It was a chance to explore, find your creative self and as the “project” grew, so did the women. The lead up to the event planned for International women’s day 2018 gradually unfolded and everyone flourished in their own way. Some created clothes, others cake. Some took to the floor to share Makosa dancing, and even more learnt how to strut and own their space.

Underlying it all was a belief that everyone has the capacity to be what they want to be and because of this everyone invested their time and energy. You didn’t have to commit to each workshop, you didn’t have to perfect poetry writing, technical drawing or even perform. You simply needed to turn up and have fun. Laughter was never far away, if it was a workshop at Positively UK, a “making” evening in someone’s home, or the IAS2018 conference in Amsterdam, there is always a joy in catwalk4power because it is a celebration. It is essentially a platform for women living with HIV to be their best selves, to step up, by strutting out of their comfort zone into an atmosphere of acceptance and appreciation. It is performance art, and creativity at its finest, whether you notice the intricately hand sown ribbons on Charity’s gown or the green anatomically representative bum from LeaSuwanna, the collection could be in any art gallery.

The initiative began with a handful of women and grew to over 40, raising funds through merchandising, self-managing and most importantly inspiring. The Catwalk4power is not an intervention for women living with HIV it is an evolution. This is why we celebrate for Love Positive Women, because they are inspiring!

For more information contact Catwalk4power@positivelyuk.org