HIV/ AIDS exhibition now on at Adler Museum – precursor to World Aids Day
- Wits Communications
The globally acclaimed HIV/AIDS exhibition, Through Positive Eyes, opens today at the Adler Museum of Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits.
Through Positive Eyes features over 100 photographs, sculptures, and live storytelling acts that document the realities of individuals worldwide living with HIV.
Uniquely, the project puts cameras into the hands of HIV-positive people themselves, encouraging them to show their faces and daily lives in response to stigma and locating their words and images at the heart of the response to the disease.
Since 2007, 122 HIV-positive people in nine major cities have taken part in this participatory photography project, contributing to an online archive of photographs and mini-documentaries.
The project is co-directed by South African-born and London-based photographer and AIDS activist Gideon Mendel. He has chronicled HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa since 1993.
On World AIDS Day, 1 December 2016, a special commemoration in the Adler Museum of Medicine will show support for people living with HIV and pay tribute to those who have died. This commemoration will include key research collections as well as showcase related research from the Faculty of Health Sciences.
David Sepeke Sekgwele, Collection Manager at the Adler Museum, says the venue serves as a space for social dialogue leading up to World AIDS Day.
“By hosting this incredible collection, the Adler Museum not only shows solidarity for people living with HIV and commemorates those who have died, but enables the public, medical experts and students to engage with research related to the art. In this way the faculty can bring about new responses to healthcare and pose different questions to inform pioneering areas of research about HIV/AIDS,” says Sekgwele.
Through Positive Eyes is on at the Adler Museum of Medicine until 31 January 2017.