The video begins with soft humming.
A shaky camera follows two-toned walls as it approaches the wooden door to an apartment. The shot steadies as a beaming woman opens the door and leans back as she begins to laugh.
The woman is Maria Aparecida Lemos, 54, who has been living with AIDS in Rio de Janeiro since 2000. Better known as Cida to her friends, family and project members of the UCLA program Make Art/Stop AIDS, Lemos was a participant in the “Through Positive Eyes” project.
Members from the Art | Global Health Center leave for South Africa today to work with HIV positive people like Lemos living in the area. The project aims to decrease the stigma surrounding HIV and teach people with the virus how to share their stories through art. One of the hardest parts of living with the virus is combating this stigma, said Bobby Gordon, outreach coordinator for the project.
A collaborative effort between world arts and cultures professor David Gere and photographer Gideon Mendel, the trip to South Africa is the third since the project’s start in Mexico city in 2008.
The group holds workshops in each location to teach participants, many of whom have never used a camera, about photography and how to use art to express themselves. Mendel, who is from South Africa, helps teach the classes and also takes portraits of each participant.
Cathryn Dhanatya, director of research development and financial administration for the Art | Global Health Center, said she likes how engaged the participants are throughout the entire process of telling their story through self-taken images.
The idea started with a WAC course that Gere taught, which allowed students to tell the stories of HIV-positive residents of Los Angeles, said Gordon, who was in the class at the time.
While the class was happy with the results, Gordon said Gere felt the project would be better structured if it allowed individuals with the virus to use their own voices to tell their stories.
“The stigma is very strong worldwide,” said Gordon, a former Daily Bruin sports editor. “I was blown away by the bravery of all participants who have taken a stand and given (the virus) a face.”
He added that, despite geographical differences, this stigma exists across the board.
“The participants basically opened up their lives during some of those photo sessions and during the workshop as a whole,” said Arianna Taboada, a fourth-year world arts and cultures student who worked on the Mexico City project.
The participants in Mexico were diverse, ranging from 19-year-olds to grandmothers, Taboada said. She added that the experience showed her the importance of community art and watching the participants grow was an amazing experience.
Gordon met Lemos in Rio de Janeiro in 2009, and said her name is a pun of sorts, as CIDA means AIDS in Spanish and Portuguese.
Lemos, who is blind due to complications with the disease, learned to take photos by feeling the subject’s face with her hands and stepping back to take the photo. Despite this additional hurdle, Gordon said she was charismatic and acted as the emotional core of the group. Lemos hit a wall when she was unable to view the photos with the rest of the group during the editing stage, however.
“She said, “˜I thought I had come to terms with my blindness; I thought I had figured this out and in this moment, it feels very fresh and very hard,'” Gordon said, adding that it was difficult to watch in a project that aimed to help, not hurt the participants.
Gordon said Lemos was able to overcome her blindness and find her joy.
“Circling back to her joy and courage was one of the most amazing and inspiring things I’ve ever witnessed. I can’t pinpoint it, what she found,” he said.
Gordon said South Africa has a long history of art activism and has been hit especially hard by the AIDS epidemic.
“I feel like everything I’ve learned (about South Africa) will be like one sentence in a 400-page book.” Gordon said. “Everything we know will be blown open.”
For more information, visit throughpositiveeyes.org