Category: Love Positive Women

We do not tread the way that is conducted by reason!

The white-born reason, from white Greece… So pale and thirsting for blood…

Reason built insane asylums and raised prisons…

It is necessary to be very rational to calculate punishments, as long as productivity does not decline, and faith remains… Yes, even faith becomes inebriated by rationality, to collect awards in the gelid and quiet sky…

Reason divided us between the superior (those gifted by reason) and the inferior (those lacking in reason)… In this hierarchy the one who occupies the top dictates who can live and who must die…

Rationality coined Sovereignty and gave it a key to control mortality and to define life…

Reason instrumentalizes human existence in a general way and causes material destruction to our bodies …

And life, ever since, only exists in the spasms and in the confrontation with death…

And Reason even associated sexuality with violence…

As if sexuality was this dissolution … as if it was excretion and appropriation…

Rationality wrote the moral and imposed a taboo regime over us all…

Reason delivered to some the right to kill, operating based on a division between the alive and the dead, such a power defines itself in relation to a biological field, over which it takes control and inscribes itself into… distributing humanity into groups, and groups into subgroups… establishing a biological censorship between one another…

Reason invented Racism!

And racism is the perverse father of the politics of death…

Racism is, above all, a technology destined to allow the exercise of biopower… that old sovereign right to kill …

In the biopower economy, the role of racism is to regulate death’s distribution and to enable the State’s assassin role…

Reason dehumanized us and industrialized death…

reason civilized ways of killing…

Reason subjugated our bodies, with medical regulations, social darwinism, eugenics, medical-legal theories about heredity, degeneration, hazardousness…

Reason fragmented territories, prohibited accesses, expanded settlements …

Reason promoted the forced sterilization of black women, intoxicated our water with monsanto and our children were born with hydrocephaly…

Reason made use of AiD$ to criminalize black bodies and their sexualities… reason coined the concept of vulnerability to keep us passive…

reason made us hostage to guilt, condoms, the cocktail…

However, we… Do not tread through the path of reason.

Our references are other… It goes through the marked body, through the back where trees were planted, through the feet that did not choose to be here… in diaspora… We chose the useless, that which has never been written, what is sung by the old woman, in the taste of bitter coffee, like life… what is not an entity, has no identity, is not in academia, or in dusty encyclopedia pages…

It is not an adjective, nor a noun… We have not yet named it.

Nor do we need to…

What matters now is to affirm that: We do not tread the path of reason!

“Nosso corre é outro!”

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Nós não trilhamos o caminho conduzido pela razão!

A razão nascida branca, da branca Grécia… Tão pálida e sedenta de sangue…

A Razão construiu Manicômios e ergueu presídios…

É preciso ser muito racional para calcular punições, na medida em que a produtividade não caia, e a fé permaneça… Sim, até a fé se embriaga de racionalidade, para angariar galardões no céu gélido e silencioso…

A Razão nos dividiu entre superiores (dotados de razão) e inferiores (ausentes de razão)… Nesta hierarquia quem ocupa o topo dita quem pode viver e quem deve morrer…

A racionalidade cunhou a Soberania e lhe deu a chave para controlar a mortalidade e definir a vida…

A razão instrumentaliza de forma generalizada a existência humana e causa a destruição material de nossos corpos …

E a vida, desde então, só existe em espasmos e no confronto com a morte…

A Razão associou até a sexualidade com a violência…

Como se sexualidade fosse essa dissolução … fosse excreção e apropriação…

A racionalidade escreveu a moral e impôs um regime de tabus sobre nós…

A razão entregou à alguns o direito de matar, operando com base em uma divisão entre vivos e mortos, tal poder se define em relação a um campo biológico, do qual toma o controle e no qual se inscreve…. distribuindo a humanidade em grupos, e os grupos em subgrupos… estabelecendo uma censura biológica entre uns e outros…

A razão inventou o Racismo!

E o racismo é pai perverso da política de morte…

Racismo é acima de tudo uma tecnologia destinada a permitir o exercício do biopoder… esse velho direito soberano de matar …

Na economia do biopoder, a função do racismo é regulamentar a distribuição da morte e tornar possíveis as funções assassinas do Estado…

a razão nos desumanizou e industrializou a morte…

a razão civilizou as formas de matar….

A razão subjugou nossos corpos, com regulamentações médicas, darwinismo social, eugenia, teorias médico-legais sobre hereditariedade, degeneração, periculosidade…

A razão fragmentou territórios, proibiu acessos, expandiu assentamentos …

A razão promoveu esterilização forçada das mulheres negras, intoxicou nossa água com maosanto e nossas crianças nasceram com hidrocefalia…

A razão se utilizou da AiD$ para criminalizar corpos negros e suas sexualidades… a razão cunhou o conceito de vulnerabilidade para nos manter passivos…

a razão nos fez refém da culpa, da camisinha, do coquetel…

Porém, nós… Não trilhamos o caminho da razão.

Nossos referências são outros… Passa pelo corpo marcado, pelas costas onde árvores foram plantadas, pelos pés que não escolheram estar aqui… em diáspora… Escolhemos o inútil, o que nunca fora escrito, o que cantado pela velha, no gosto do café amargo como a vida… o que não é ente, não tem identidade, não esta na academia, nem nas folhas das enciclopédias empoeiradas …

Não é adjetivo, nem substantivo… Ainda não nomeamos.

Nem precisamos…

O que importa agora afirmar é que: Nós, não trilhamos o caminho da razão!

“Nosso corre é outro!”

By Ayu Oktariani

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I was living with HIV for 8 years when I decide to pregnant. It’s been a long journey to make that decision. Waiting for the man who understand each other and want to take responsibility of having a child free from HIV. My husband is HIV Negative, so of course it’s easier for me to planning the pregnancy. I’m very nervous. It’s been 10 years after my first born. We have sex, no condom this time. But before planning to get pregnant, we always used the condom. I feel uncomfortable if we don’t use it, yeah you know… because of the HIV.

So, I am pregnant! I don’t know if it’s a happy or sad thing.

Once I see the two stripes in the pregnancy test, I feel like my world was going down. My mood is terrible and I don’t know why.  I was confused, and I suddenly felt capable of doing something unusual. 

I remember going to service station to fix the car with my husband. On the way I suddenly drew in a small notebook that I always bring everywhere. I don’t understand why, and I don’t know what I was drawing. It was circle with so many layer and pattern inside. It’s a repetition pattern. I realize something, every time I traced the pen I feel so much better. My husband ask what am I doing? What I am  drawing? And I said I don’t know, but I feel good.

After that moment, I buy all  the drawing tools for my painting. I practice at home, in a café, before sleep, and anywhere. And I realize I never feel terrible again during the pregnancy. 

The terrible mood during pregnancy is not gone. They keep coming back and what make it worse, I couldn’t eat anything. And not long after finish eating I will vomit. I remember I loss almost 15 pound in my first 16 week. It was so exhausted. Sometimes I’m crying with no reason in the middle of the night. I am very afraid to be in the in a crowd, like if I’m going to traditional market. I can suddenly vomit in front of the people I don’t feel comfortable with.  

But then again, I feel much better when I decide to draw. 

So curious with the pattern and the circle I draw, I searching and Voila! The name is Mandala! What I got from the definition from Wikipedia, Mandala is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the universe.  After know what I drew, I do not care so much. I am not so concerned just kept drawing and feel that Mandala repaired the bad thing during my pregnancy.

After a long journey the day he was born finally arrived. No is not easy.

It’s one of my painful journey after battle HIV stigma and everything. The baby was born, his name is Sir Miguel. Unfortunately, I never see him once he comes out from my stomach after the surgery. Because of the shit procedure that makes me asleep with the anaesthetic. I never know that he is not crying, I don’t know he had trouble breathing, I don’t even know that his ratio of oxygen only 60% after born. In order to breathing he should be fitted with the ventilator machine.

It’s getting worse because the hospital in our city in Indonesia cannot provide my baby the machine to help him breathe. So he should move to other hospital, they separate us. I can’t even touch or breastfeed him, or even his first prophylaxis medication (to stop him from getting HIV). They just took him away from me. My husband is taking care of him, once in awhile he sent me his picture or video of him in a box with the machine entering into his small throat. I am crying. I cannot calm down, I screwed up everything. I’m a bad mom, I cannot deliver a healthy baby, it’s my fault.

40 hours after the doctor trying to help, Sir Miguel passed away.

And we never got an answer why.

.

.

.

Today, it’s been almost 2 years after he leaving us. I am recovering every second using so many methods. I am following the five step of grief and I feel like shit each time I remember this story. My parents, husband, daughter and even my friends are trying so hard to cheer me up. But they cannot. 

On July, third month after my baby left me… I start to drawing Mandala again. 

But now is different. I don’t feel anything, I’m not feeling even better. But I am trying every day. I remember, during the pregnancy that I could draw three Mandala a day. But now, one is struggling. Until sometime, one of my friend Dea, with her astrology project asking me to help drawing for the Taurus Session. I ask why me? I am Libra. And she said, it’s not because of me. She is interest with the Mandala. So the project is talking about the sign of the zodiac each month and it include one artist to make some art that relate to the zodiac sign.

I keep asking why me?

But After a month of trying, I finish draw a head of bull, with the Mandala Pattern inside and around. That’s it. But Dea, who own the project found a lot of “thing” that I need to know.

She thinks during my pregnancy the energy for drawing of the Mandala is come from the baby. She can prove it with the zodiac chart that she check in her apps. After she put a date and time of him, this what come after…

“Most of the planet is in second quadrant, it’s the area of creativity. Arrangement of planets also not really scattered, means he is focus. Miguel is a Lunar Aries, with Scorpio rising. It makes him have a big energy and It may be a little mysterious his external appearance”.

I am speechless.

There so much magical coincidence in our collaboration. She doesn’t know why there is strong encouragement to ask me to be artist who contributed to the Taurus edition. She knows that I am a Libra, but after all her investigation she realized that the Taurus one is Miguel. 

The other fact is I start to draw is when I pregnant, and after Miguel born I am back to be the Libra who very inconsistent. My art is also change more colorful, it’s so black and white before.

She is claiming to seek artist but nearly the same time I suddenly showed up with the mandala. Our deep conversation makes me found the connection between the Sand Mandala from Tibet and my journey of Guarding, praying, and eventually let the baby go.

There is another friend who can also see something during the pregnancy. “Ayu, your baby is so powerful and have a big energy, it’s larger than the mother. As the mother you may not be able to bear energy of your son. That is why the universe immediately take him a moment after he was born.”

Dea  said something again about Miguel “He lived without the body because maybe body cannot accommodate his strength. That was so large energy and he cannot solidified in space. But for sure, he will never leave you. He always be with you as something that I cannot explain. I believe this project wan to remind you as his parents”.

In one of the in ancient mythology of taurus, zeus said, “All things reached by your eyes after that you may have.”

Meanwhile Dea think, Miguel might say “There is something that you cannot reach from your eyes and you cannot have. But, what do you let go of actually, living together with you as the essence.”

I still draw Mandala until now. I also draw for people who want me to see inside them self, it’s all for free. I am never try to sell anything.  Somehow, I believe mandala really help me to fight my anxiety and fear also the anger of loss. 

The history of Tibetan Mandala start with the Sand, it made with pray and very care full by the monk, Mandala is the means of meditation. When it’s done and be a beautiful image, the mandala must be removed. Sand collected for release into the sea so it reached the shore.  

A series of the ceremony was conducted to remind me that is nothing eternal. Happiness, sadness, comfort, suffering, all flowing in cycles for the larger planned.  At the end, we have to learn releasing everything with sincere.  Like the sand from the Mandala that clad with pray, everything that we release will flow over the ocean to the universe. For Love Positive Women, let’s share our own wisdom of healing together.

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.

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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
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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?