Real Stories Gallery

Real Stories Gallery is a conversation created by our visual arts and stories, to shift perceptions surrounding HIV and AIDS. Today HIV affects the lives of men, women and children on all continents around the world. Artists, poets, writers and storytellers from across the breadth and depth of our communities, will share their experiences, reflections and life-saving knowledge. By working together we will inspire a culture of compassion and acceptance for our neighbours whose lives are affected.

"One of the urgent issues today is the scourge of HIV/AIDS. AIDS is a disease that affects our physical bodies. Yet, it has also been allowed to scourge through our communities through its' cultural stigma. The stigma associated with HIV and AIDS prevents lifesaving information and treatment from reaching those at risk and most in need.

Real Stories Gallery is bringing together a global community of artists and storytellers, to heal our communities - traumatized by this contemporary catastrophe and is thus seeking to dispel the destructive stigma assigned to HIV and AIDS, so millions of lives can be saved.

I urge you to seize the opportunity afforded today by Real Stories Gallery. Through images and stories, let us come together to break the silence of fear and shame surrounding HIV and AIDS. Through such creativity, we can inspire a new culture in which everyone will be free to receive lifesaving HIV prevention and so that all may live freely with dignity and respect."

Dr Vishakha N. Desai (President, Asia Society, U.S.A.)

 

"We watch carefully the people who inspire us, and listen to the stories they tell us; what we learn from them shapes what we understand, how we feel and how we act in the world."

Professor Philip Goulder (Pediatrician & Research Immunologist, HIV Infection & Immune Control Group, Brasenose College, University of Oxford, U.K.)

 

"I have watched Real Stories Gallery evolve from the outset - a pure vision encountering huge obstacles, but never wavering. The result is what you see: An inspiration to all of us, a path forward for our hearts and minds (and bodies) and a reminder of how technology is there to fulfill human creativity and meet human needs."

Daniel Ben-Horin (Founder and Co-Ceo TechSoup Global, U.S.A.)

 

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A Humanist Partnership For Social Change: The Arts, Technology, Medicine.

Real Stories Gallery is an online not-for-profit visual arts and storytelling HIV prevention campaign, in partnership with Art For Humanity to support the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation's Mobile Tutu Tester Community Clinics. 

We invite the Creative Arts to contribute an image, inspired by a life affected by HIV/AIDS within their community, or social and professional networks. We invite Creative Writers and Storytellers to contribute their experiences and reflections. We invite those working on the front line of HIV prevention and treatment to share their lifesaving knowledge. We invite the world of technology to help our stories and collective knowledge flow out of and into and between our communities around the world. 

Artists and creative writers and storytellers will bring empathy to this global human rights issue, for the scourge of HIV exists within their own communities and amongst their friends and colleagues around the world. The simple act of reaching out and listening to someone's story and then returning to share it with us all on Real Stories Gallery, will allow us all to pause and glimpse - the real person, behind the cruel cultural stereotypes that prevent millions of our neighbours around the world from receiving lifesaving HIV prevention and treatment. 

We invite all our visitors to actively participate, through sharing their own stories on Frances' HIV Prevention Storytelling Blog and Luyanda's HIV Prevention Storytelling Blog, and through the telling and re-telling of everyone's stories to spread awareness throughout the depth and breadth of our communities. Visitors will also have the opportunity to buy some of the artworks within the gallery to directly support individual artists and their families, and to make a donation to support the highly effective Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation's Mobile Tutu Tester Community Clinics. 

The cause is URGENT. Everyone's health is directly related to the strength of community surrounding us, whether we are well or ill. Today technology has expanded the breadth and depth of our neighbourhoods. Living amongst us there are an estimated 33 million people - men, women and children, who are infected with HIV; and there are millions more of us who are thereby deeply affected (our colleagues, neighbours, friends and families).  

Everyone's contribution to Real Stories Gallery will play an important role within this collaborative and community-led conversation. Together we can mobilize and harness humanity's creative capacity to heal and effect social change at the local level. Through the ingenuity of our global technologies, we can support each other, cross-fertilize lifesaving ideas and inspire those much needed ethical values, without which our human dignity and respect for each other would be under threat. 

Thank you for joining us today on Real Stories Gallery. The Ujamaa of visual arts and storytelling, the strength of our multi-disciplinary creativity and our shared vision, will begin to shift cultural perceptions of HIV/AIDS and expand access to urgent and lifesaving HIV prevention and treatment. Together we will slow down the rapid spread of HIV within and across our neighbourhoods throughout the world. 

 

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Human Rights and HIV

"Let us will ourselves against the pandemic with the same urgency and vigour of our fight against apartheid. If we had artists of the world against apartheid, why can't we have artists of the world against AIDS?" 

David Koloane, M.A. (Artist, South Africa).

 

'It is now absolutely clear that stigma, discrimination and rights violations -- whether focused directly on people with HIV or on particular groups, such as women and girls, men who have sex with men, people who use drugs or trade/sell sex or young people - as well as punitive or misguided policies towards key populations most affected by HIV, are major obstacles to an effective response to HIV.' (XVIII INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE, 2010 Vienna Austria).

 

'At the United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS in 2006, world leaders reaffirmed that "the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all is an essential element in the global response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic."  Yet, 25 years into the AIDS epidemic, the "essential element" remains the missing piece in the fight against AIDS...  now more than ever, human rights should occuply the center of the global struggle against HIV and AIDS' (www.HIVhumanrightsnow.org).

 

"No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity--or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings by racial classification and then denied them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity. It is time to stand up for another wrong."

Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Cape Town, South Africa)

 

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"The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still, small voice of conscience" (Mahatma Gandhi).

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"Hurt," by Jan Jordaan (Artist, South Africa. Copyright Art For Humanity)

 

"As a white Afrikaner male, I represent that for which ‘ aparthate' was declared a crime against humanity. It is important for me to facilitate, through that which I know best - printmaking - some sort of insurance against all present day and future, crimes against humanity...  I believe the 'vaccine' against HIV /AIDS is found within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights"

Jan Jordaan (Artist; Co-Founder & Director of Art For Humanity; Fine Art Lecturer, D.U.T., Durban, South Africa; Founding Partner of Real Stories Gallery; Recipient of the 2010 "Too Little Too Late" CFAD Art & Media Award, South Africa)

 

 

"Tri-age," by Marie-Helen Couvin (Artist, Haiti. Copyright Art For Humanity)

 

"This painting is about intolerance, beliefs and victimisation. In my native home, Haiti, poverty, hatred and ignorance have turned people to monsters and against their own kind. I made this painting to express my feeling about the madness that exists in ghettos, in the Third World or any places where crimes are perpetrated because of racism, bigotry or any form of intolerance.

I used the hooded image to portray intolerance, ignorance and brutal force. The blue figure in the middle is synonym of religious beliefs and quiet acceptance; also helplessness because crimes are made often in the name of religion. It also represents ancestral culture, identity. The third figure is a powerless victim or a passive witness of crime."

 

"Stories and narratives help define who we are, and help us understand our world and what it means to be human. And the stories on the magnificent Real Stories Gallery will do all that - but will also have an impact on the world, and help reduce the spread of HIV."

Professor Paul Webley (Director, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, U.K.)

 

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"Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve"

 

"HOME," by Berry Bickle (Artist, Zimbabwe)

"Bulawayo, I am from Bulawayo, the second city of Zimbabwe. On a return to Home, I found, saw, so many people wearing the black patch of mourning attached to their shirts. I knew what the patch meant and for whom it was worn; a generation decimated by AIDS and parents burying their children. It was with profound grief that I created my images - HOME - for Real Stories Gallery."

Berry Bickle (Artist, Zimbabwe; Partner of Real Stories Gallery).

 

"Millions of women and children will continue to suffer and die until something changes, starting with the very way we think. There is this beautiful ideology in my country called Ubuntu. It is the ideal that a person is who he/she is because of others. I believe life truly has meaning when you stop only living for yourself and you start living for others as well. Think about all those people who made a difference throughout history. Their lives had and have meaning, simply because their lives have meaning for us today."

Luyanda Zindela (19 year old Fine Art Student, D.U.T., Durban, South Africa).

 

"People infected with the virus have the human right to become angels, ancestors, legends and heroes whom we remember and praise."

Joseph Madisia (Artist; Director of National Art Gallery, Namibia)

 

 

"We cannot forget the people who came before us; the people who put their lives on the line to enter clinical trials and test new medications.  The people who marched in protest hoping someone would listen.  The people who made it possible for YOU to survive today.   All the medications, programs, and support that are available today are because of the hundreds of thousands of people who fought for survival, who stood up for their rights and yours, the people who are no longer with us.  Take a moment today and remember those who came before you, for US."

"Remember," by lovinglife101. Copyright http://girllikeme.org/2010/08/30/remember/

 

 

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"Sometimes it takes as much courage to listen to a story being shared, as it does to tell it."

"These exceptional stories reach out and touch our humanity; creating a special bond. They stir within us a sense of outrage and shame, and a longing for grace and kindness."

Rachel Chapple (Anthropologist, U.K.; Co-Founder of Real Stories Gallery)

 

"Why Am I Sharing My Story Today?" by Junior Mayema (Law Student, Democratic Republic of Congo - South African refugee).

"I was born on the 30th of July 1987 in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. I have always really liked the fact my zodiac sign is Leo. What do they say about Leo's? Leos tend to be dignified and strong. Ummm. The thought has always inspired me; and given me the courage to share my story with you today...

I absolutely knew I was GAY when I was fourteen years old. My friends called me "pede" (queer), because I preferred to play with girls and I looked, and felt, effeminate. Although homosexuality is not illegal within my country, it is also, and most certainly, not embraced or welcomed. So... in an attempt to change my mind and my sexual orientation, my family intervened with the punitive practice of 'corrective rape.' To this day I still feel mystified as to how such a ridiculous idea transformed itself into a daily practice and belief within my community.

What I know clearly, though, is that my uncle and my brother's friends never used a condom as they repeatedly raped me, and that their actions left me feeling humiliated, terrified and brutally hurt - physically and psychologically.

Why am I sharing my story today? Because thousands of homosexual, and heterosexual, people have become infected with HIV in my home country, as a direct result of not believing that HIV can be transmitted through anal intercourse. This belief has left me today grieving for too many friends.

HIV is a virus. It does not discriminate between how it enters a human body, nor whose body it enters. Any opening in any body is good enough for this invisible virus.

Be careful my friends - be very careful."  

 

"Heterosexual Anal Sex and HIV"

Compiled by Zoe Duby, Mphil, Doctoral Fellow, Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation & University of Cape Town, June 2010

Unprotected heterosexual sex is the main driver of the HIV epidemic in Africa. The risk of HIV transmission during unprotected anal intercourse is estimated to be as much as 18 times higher than during unprotected vaginal sex. Reasons for heterosexual anal sex are various and include pleasure, adventure-seeking, greater physical intimacy, peer pressure, female submission, contraception, virginity maintenance, menstruation, pregnancy and money. Anal sex is often not considered to be "real sex" and many young girls choose to engage in anal intercourse in order to maintain 'technical virginity' and as a form of contraception. Commercial sex workers receive higher prices for anal intercourse than vaginal intercourse, especially without a condom. Due to a lack of information, people are choosing to practice unprotected anal sex as a form of "safe sex" and evidence shows that condom use for anal sex is universally lower than for penile-vaginal sex.

 

"Where Are The Cows," by Beverley Samler (Artist, South Africa. Copyright Art For Humanity)

 

"Looking up," by Finuala Dowling (Poet, South Africa)

Copyright Art For Humanity

 

The moment before you died

You looked up,

The way all children look up: hopefully.

You were expecting us to come

But we didn't come.

 

You see --

The economy has been growing at 3.2% per year

Many of our shopping malls have parking for over 1000 cars

Things have been looking up

We've had a lot of new stuff to look after

 

Of course, when we read how you'd died,

You had three hundred thousand mothers;

You had four hundred thousand fathers.

 

Yet it's true that the moment before you died,

You looked up, and no one came.

 

"Impucuko" (IsiXhosa translation)

Umzuzwana phambi kokuba usweleke

Wajonga phezulu

Ngendlela bonke abantwana abajonga ngayo: ngethemba.

Ubulindele okokuba sifike

Kodwa zange sifike.

 

Uyabona ke --

Uqoqosho lunyuke kakuhle ngonyaka

iivenkile zethu ezinkulu zineendawo zokupaka iimoto

ezingaphezu kwewaka

Izinto ziye zaphucuka

Besinezinto ezininzi ezintsha esinokujonga kuzo

 

Kaloku, sakuba sifunde indlela obusweleke ngayo

Ubunentlaninge yoomama.

Ubunentlaninge yootata.

 

Nangona, uthe ngomzuzwana phambi kokuba usweleke

Wajonga phezulu,

Kodwa akwabikho

namnye ufikayo.

 

 

"Having Sex With A Virgin Does Not Cure HIV/AIDS," by Rachel Chapple (anthropologist, Co-Founder Real Stories Gallery)

 

Are You So Afraid Of Dying

You Would Abandon Your Pride,

Shut Your Heart To The Hurt

And Your Mind To The Truth?

 

Our Daughter, Our Sister, Our Cousin,

She Will Bleed and She Will Tear,

And You,

You Will Remain Infected

 

By The Knowledge

You Abandoned Your Pride,

Shut Your Heart To The Hurt

And Your Mind To The Truth.

 

At the Red Cross Children's Hospital, head of trauma, Dr Sebastian van As says that long term physical consequences of sexual assaults in small children include dysuria (pain when a child passes urine which leads to them becoming frightened to urinate), temporary urinary incontinence (urine leaks out), perineal infection (an abscess or wound at the perineum that resists healing) and ecopresis (when they are unable to keep the stool in). In the rape of infants the perineum gets ripped and the vagina and anus become a single wound. "If the rupture extends into the abdomen the children develop peritonitis and die within a day. These children have scar tissue that will ensure they will never have a completely normal sex life. If they give birth, it will have to be a caesarean section." 

http://www.speakout.org.za/about/child/child  virginrape_myth.html "Virgin Rape Myth," academic paper, Sex and Secrecy Conference 2003. Presenting Author: Charlene Smith

 

Young and beautiful
And really, really hurting

We have lost our soul
We are all guilty
In condemning you

Your mother
Your brother
Your father

And you...

Condemning you my sister

 

Are you not our sister ?

Ubuntu

 

"My Birthday Wish," by Angela Buckland (artist, South Africa)

Copyright Art For Humanity

 

"My Birthday Wish" by Kareemah El-Amin (poet, U.S.A.)

Copyright Art For Humanity

 

He said he doesn't want to die, my hymen for his life

I've saved 100 lives since birth

 

Between my legs is his salvation

He speaks of love and understanding, piety and grace

With his penis in my face

Gifting me with the sacrament of his unholy communion

I turned nine today

Blow out the candles, and make a wish

"Father, please forgive my sins...

Let me join you before I turn ten"

 

Zwine Nda Tama Nga Duvha Langa La Mabebo (Tshivenda translation, coordinated by Dr Maria Letsie)

O ri ha todi u fa, vhusidzana hanga ndo vhu vhulungela vhutshilo hawe

Ndo vhulunga matshilo a dana tshe nda bebwa

Vhukati ha milenzhe yanga ndi phuluso yawe

U amba nga ha lufuno na u pfesesa, vhudikumedzeli na tshilidzi

Na vhudzimu hawe khofheni hanga

A tshi mpha tshiga tsha tshilalelo tshivhi

Ndo fara minwaha ya tahe namusi

Ndi dzima makhandela nda bula itsho tshine nda tama

"Khotsi, nkhangwele zwivhi zwanga...

Kha ndi vhe na iwe ndi saathu u fara minwaha ya fumi"

 

 

"Ear," by Ebina Tatsuo (Artist, Japan) and Yutaka Hirose (Assistant Artist, Japan).

Copyright Art For Humanity

Our work has been created with characters from different alphabets that are used somewhere in the world. It is likely that characters that are foreign to you appear as simply patterns in black, however each and every character has meaning and a long history attached to it. It takes so many years of blood, sweat and tears to reach each character's current form and so many different characters have disappeared through the ages. When we approached the work, we realized the characters are the hope to communicate to others, the will to connect the past, to the future, and of civilization.

"Human Lesson," by Dai Hirose (poet, Japan)

Copyright Art For Humanity

 

When I entered the world from the entrance which

is my mother,

The first man to lift and hug me was a heavy bearded

doctor whom I didn't know.

Because I realized that my first hug was not my

mother's,

I cried as soon as I was born.

 

The human body is not made to give birth alone,

But there is a vague memory in me,

Like a zebra, a cat, a whale, humans used to give

birth alone more easily.

 

Bodies which are too weak to bear a baby alone,

Maybe that's God's present to us.

It made our existence such that we can't live

without helping each other.

Humans became humans.

 

So, strain your ears,

You can hear the first cry of a baby from

somewhere in the world.

 

Born HIV Free. The Global Fund.

Born HIV Free is a campaign by The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.