This year’s World Aids Day took us to Berlin in Germany to share, paint and showcase our stories of positive living together with a group of men and women living with HIV/Aids in Berlin.  The 3-day workshop and month-long exhibition at the Technical University of Berlin was organised in collaboration with the GTZ (German Development Cooperation), TICAH (Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health) and DAH, the German umbrella body for HIV/Aids-related groups and organisations in Germany.

The Art2Be team travelling to Berlin were Xavier, Annette, and Celestine Musyoka who has participated in several Art2Be workshops in Kenya in the past.  Celestine lives positively and works as an HIV/Aids counsellor and activist in Kenya.  The body maps she has created in the past speak of her courage and determination to fight for a better life for people – especially young and single mothers – living with HIV/Aids.  One of her Body Maps travelled with us to be exhibited in Berlin alongside others from Kenya, India, Thailand and Germany.

The workshop brought together 10 men and women of diverse sexual orientation and cultural backgrounds with two-thirds of the participants having immigrated to Germany from Ethiopia, Columbia, Somalia, Turkey and Algeria.  As a result, we spent together three very inspiring days, building bridges between our different paths by talking a mix of German, English and French, listening to each other’s tales of life in and outside of Germany, painting our pains and joys, meditating, dancing, eating, and even exchanging clothes!

As one participant said in the end, it was her first of many workshops and HIV/Aids-related events in Berlin where she felt really connected and found her rightful place as an immigrant alongside non-immigrant Berliners.  Well, no better place than Berlin to experience walls between people breaking down! Regardless of who we were or came from, in the end we all felt very much connected by our fragility, our sorrows and hopes, our beauty, and the power of smiles and tender touch. The workshop culminated in the public opening of the exhibition “Unser Positives Leben” in the grand gallery of the Technical University Berlin.  The evening’s program was kicked off with a panel discussion facilitated by well-known presenters from Radio5 who brought into conversation representatives from Art2Be, GTZ, DAH, German ministers for health, work and social affairs and Body Mapping participants Celestine Musyoka (Kenya) and Thilo Kundt (Berlin). 

The mix of technical, political and personal perspectives on the challenges of HIV/Aids today made this an interesting and stimulating exchange. As the panel discussion drew to an end, the beautiful body maps lit like precious gems in the gallery around us invited the audience into a more intimate space to encounter the lives of 30 men and women living with HIV/Aids in Kenya, Germany, India and Thailand.  Many heartfelt and thought-provoking conversations took place in front of the paintings, their accompanying stories and a series of photographs illustrating the process of a typical Body Mapping Workshop.

The exhibition is accompanied by a film series and continues until the 20th December.  It will then give way to a GTZ-commissioned travelling exhibition to tour different venues in Germany throughout 2009.  The core exhibition will move to Portland in the USA where it will be show at the Bates.College Museum for Art from June 12th – December 11th 2009.

Click here to view workshop images

Click here to view exhibition images