photo, Mike DelVecchia

Sometimes it takes a familiar image to give a disease a human face. Body Maps, a new exhibit at the Painted Bride Art Center goes further, featuring the entire body in a series of works created by a group of South African women living with HIV.

Body Maps, on display through January 15, 2005, features 21 life-size panels created by HIV-positive women. Each panel varies widely from simple to ornate, expressing the gamut of emotions from desperate to joyful. Yet despite their surface differences, all the works illustrate past, present and future hopes and dreams and, of course, the virus that lives inside each artist.

Drawn on life-sized panels of butcher paper, "body maps" are made by tracing two bodies- of the artist and a partner. The artist then goes about filling in the traced body with images, words, patterns, designs and scars. A type of art therapy, the maps are used in conjunction with group therapy, photography and writing in order to help each woman deal with her HIV-positive status. It should be noted that all but one of the maps are created by women-- the lone male participant dropped out of the program before finishing his map.

"For the Bride, this exhibit so complements our mission, which talks about the healing powers of the arts," explains Lisa Nelson-Haynes, associate director at the Painted Bride. "Art is very healing and necessary in our lives on a continual basis, and this exhibit really does exemplify that concept."

"The body maps grew out of something called the Memory Box Project, and that project in the Cape Town area was being run by an outreach unit of Cape Town [University], and was done as a way of going out and working with HIV-infected people in the township of South Africa, and also completing research," says Bernard Leibov, a consultant to the Body Maps project, who lives in New York. Leibov, who was instrumental in bringing the body maps to the United States, added, "I'm a former South African, and had been looking to reestablish my ties with South Africa. I'd been away for 26 years, and been disconnected from [South Africa], and was sort of waking up from that fact."

photo, Mike DelVecchia

The Memory Box project sprang from a community outreach program through the AIDS and Society Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, which strives to understand better the relationship between HIV and society. Based on a program started in Uganda, the project, called, "Mapping Our Lives," produced the original series of body maps, which are digitally reproduced on canvas and are featured in a book that can be purchased at the Bride. The book, Long Life: HIV Positive Stories (Double Stories, 2003), features the work of the original participants, known as the Bambanani Women's Group. It was written by Jonathan Morgan, the director of the Body Maps project at the University of Cape Town.

Combining art and medical therapies, the participants worked with members of international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the Treatment Action Campaign, a grassroots organization that works toward HIV literacy and treatment.

The original goal of the Memory Box project was to help HIV-positive women come to terms with their illness and prepare for inevitable death. Since its inception in 2001, however, antiretroviral treatments, or ARV's, have become widely available, thanks in large part to MSF. The focus of the project has shifted dramatically. Where an HIV-positive status was once a death sentence across the continent, ARV's are giving people back much of their health in addition to their futures. Because of this, many of the original Memory Box participants have become activists, working as part of a group called the A-Team, which travels across the country, and world, educating others who are HIV-positive about their options and different treatments. "In South Africa [Memory Box] started much more as legacy project to leave with orphans," said Jennifer Lytton, director of special studies at the Center for Special Studies, HIV/AIDS program at NYU Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center, in Manhattan. She added that the project's theme had concerned, "'What sort of image and representation do you want to leave with your child?' But certainly here and in South Africa it is much less about mourning and creating a legacy and more about celebrating life."

"We now like to talk about memory boxes and books as a tool to help people fight for life rather than to prepare for death," writes Morgan, in a forthcoming book, An Anthology of Innovative Organizations, Institutions and Groups of People Working to Promote Quality of Life and Create Positive Change. When you make a memory box the purpose is to open up space for your preferred story," he writes. "This can be a story of hope and activism challenging limited access to life saving and life prolonging medication, and it can be your way of living with HIV and still living a healthy and positive life, and it can be a story about talking about pain and loss and death where little other space exists to talk about these."

In 2004, some may wonder about the relevance between South Africa, where HIV infects one-fourth of the adult population, and the U.S., where AIDS is almost passé, left in the dust by much more in-the-news causes such as cancer and stem cell research.

"It's like an afterthought, I think, because we're so fortunate here in the U.S.," said Nelson-Haynes, who added, "We have drugs where people are able to live and maintain a quality of life. But there has been a negative, because [AIDS] … is not on the front burner of our agenda. There are people being diagnosed with HIV and AIDS every day, especially young people. But because we're not in a crisis mode it's not given our attention."

	photo, Mike DelVecchia

"I think that medicine has helped people manage the disease much better, and so it's not as much a crisis. I unfortunately think that in the U.S. it's become more a disease of poverty and it's become more settled in communities of color and with those who have fewer resources or are indigent … When health issues affect those areas of our community, we tend to not pay as much attention to them," said Lytton.

"I don't want to say that across-the-board, because there are so many people dedicated to serving this community, but I think those are overall trends I see," Lytton added. "And a lot of the focus has also now gone overseas, because we do have treatments and a lot of people have access to medicine, care and services. So I guess that's a positive way to look at it."

Lytton, whose background is in 'public education through art', works with HIV-positive people on public assistance. She ran a body-mapping workshop with three of the original Memory Box project participants. "It was a very unusual project for them, but it was amazing, she explains, adding, "It can be a variety of things for different people, difficult for some, liberating for others … [The participants] are always being represented or being labeled by other people, but this way, they could really show themselves publicly through something that they put up on a wall ..."

Part of the process of mapping the body is to show where, on the body, wounds, scars or marks have been made. "All the scars you have and all the things you really experience in your body," said Lytton (who recently ran a body mapping workshop at the Bride). "It's amazing that over the last ten or 15 years, since [the participants] have been diagnosed, a lot of their ailments are related to HIV. They realized how strong they are and how they'd survived. They'd never thought of [the disease] cumulatively. That was really exciting. And it makes them aware of how difficult it was to identify with their HIV, to present themselves as not just a woman, but a woman with HIV."

In South Africa where the disease is rampant, two-thirds of the worldwide cases of HIV reside in the sub-Saharan continent, according to the National Institutes of Health. Many people live in abject poverty in shacks that are cold, leaky and unsafe, with raw sewage and garbage on the ground. Women make up the bulk of those affected--- whether they are infected or not. Not only are females responsible for most of the care of children, elders and partners, but they tend to be powerless against infection due to cultural and social factors, such as the resistance to condom use, women's low social status and the frequency of rape. Moreover their poverty is often a great determinant of women's entry into the sex trade. For many, the Memory Box project is women's first opportunity to think of themselves as whole individuals, separate from the men, who, in many instances, control their very existences.

In the U.S., things are somewhat better, but the demographics of the disease have changed here as well since its introduction into the gay community in the early 1980s. Since then, HIV continues to infect across the U.S., especially in the poorest places, where a lack of education and resources places the infection rate at 40,000 new cases each year, 76.4 percent of which are among blacks, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

photo, Mike DelVecchia

In South Africa, those infected with HIV in an economically depressed situation are 20 times more likely to die than those in industrialized areas due to lack of access to antiretroviral therapies. Despite the high numbers of those infected, the social ramifications can be devastating.

"Tremendous stigma surrounds HIV and AIDS in South Africa," writes Morgan. "Many of the women we meet in our groups have not disclosed their HIV status to their male partners who infected them in the first place. Many women who disclose their status to family and partners risk rejection, eviction, and in some cases, murder. Combined with very few treatment opportunities, there is not a great incentive for HIV-positive people to go public with their status. Often this silence contributes to secrecy, shame, guilt, anger and inevitably, further spread of the virus."

But programs like MSF's antiretroviral treatments are instrumental in educating and helping those in South Africa who are infected with HIV. And, the Memory Box participants play a vital role. The South African government has consistently refused to provide ARV's to the public, arguing that treatment will not work in a poor country, where those who are both uneducated and infected will not be able to complete the treatment regimen consistently. However, participants in the Memory Box program have proven the government wrong. And, in the body maps, those very ARV's play a significant part of each participant's life, helping the artist to map and document who she was, is and hopes to be.

Lytton said, "There's something very powerful in that. It's different from their modalities," (or, normal way of thinking of themselves and the disease). "And to think about how to express HIV in their bodies--- what that would look like. Some [artists] made scissors [to signify] where [the disease] lives in their bodies. How do they express it and how do they visualize it? Is it cutting me, is it a mean thing? Is it just waiting there, is it a round thing, is it foreign?" said Lytton.

On the maps, some artists chose to represent the virus as dots, while others depict it as a large mass occupying their system. But overall, the virus commingles with the rest of their lives. Nearly every map includes a child - most of the artists have given birth. Some women document their fears about infecting their children, while others mourn infants who have already succumbed to the disease. The themes are daunting, but through the mapping, these experiences give way to strength and hope. Some of the strength comes from the fact that the artists do not create alone. In fact, each body map is created by two people.

"I love that part of the process is drawing the outline of yourself and the person who drew you," said Lytton, referring to the double image all maps have. Mapping is a two-person process, she explains, with both participants outlined on the map, "to show that you couldn't do this on your own. You use that shadow to represent someone or something in your life that is your support-mother, husband, community, religion-something behind you that is in support of you, that you're not just here alone," she added.

When it comes to the Body Maps, just the act of creating - drawing, painting, writing, tends to bring out unexpected emotions and responses. "I think that our bodies hold a lot of memories, and they're stored in different places. I do think that once you start drawing them, even just subtle things get expressed on paper you're not completely aware of," explained Lytton.

Eleven original body maps on butcher paper are on display at the Painted Bride alongside ten digital prints on canvas of the original series. The digital prints came from David Krut Fine Art Gallery, which deals with the digital images and their distribution across the world (thanks to locations in both Manhattan and Johannesburg). "To get those digital prints, that's a whole other story," recalled Nelson-Haynes. "We had ten of them, but that wasn't enough for our space … David Krut's people put me in touch with someone in South Africa, and it started a long e-mail process back in the spring." Getting bounced from one person to the other, Nelson-Haynes finally got in touch with Morgan. "And almost instantly [Morgan] said, 'We have some originals here that the women just created. Would you be interested?' And we said of course we would."

"We received eleven originals to add in with what we already had, which is really significant. It shows that here is where their project started, and here it continues. It's just like the disease, where women are being diagnosed every day," said Nelson-Haynes.

Despite the participants' complete lack of art backgrounds and knowledge about now to ship the fragile pieces internationally, Morgan and the Memory Box participants made it happen, culminating in a complete exhibition that fills the Bride's main hall.

"I'm really hoping that this work sells," said Nelson-Haynes, who added, "If the work sells more, women get access to more drugs." Revenue from the sale of the art, reproductions and books will fund treatment of the artists and their families. Nelson-Haynes, concluded, "I also hope that it sparks conversation and dialog and all those wonderful things that make it so engaging." Digital prints, full-size reproductions and books can be purchased at the Bride.

Body Maps runs through January 15, 2005, at the Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine Street, Philadelphia. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday noon to 6 p.m. and during performances. For more information call (215) 925-9914 or go to www.paintedbride.org.

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