Body Mapping
Exhibitions & Performances
Since their launch in Kobe, Japan, in July 2005 our body maps have traveled the globe both accompanied and unaccompanied. We took them to two international AIDS Conferences where we held performed and shared our maps and stories. They have since been exhibited in Thailand, India, the USA, and have just traveled to London for an exhibition hosted at the Brunei Gallery in the School of Oriental and African Studies from April to July 2008.
Launching the Body Maps - Kobe, Japan
TICAH hosted a ninety-minute performance demonstration at the HIV/AIDS Conference in Kobe, Japan, in July 2005 called Our Positive Bodies: Mapping our Treatment, Sharing our Choices. Amina Ridhwani, Veena Shenoy, Saitharn Prai-Ngam, Siriporn Yongpanichkul, Bishakha Datta, Tara Fitzgerald, and Mary Ann Burris traveled to Kobe as the TICAH team. We sang, laughed, cried and introduced ourselves and the thirteen body maps we brought with us by telling the stories of the women who painted them. We triumphed through a very moving event which shared our realities, our treatment, our lives, and the things we need to take care of ourselves, take care of our families, and continue to be strong and acknowledged members of our communities. We presented a beautiful a slide show of photographs taken at our three workshops in Kenya, India, and Thailand.
Exhibits in India and Thailand
TICAH's body maps traveled to the 10th National AIDS Conference in Thailand where two of our Thai participants hosted a skills building workshop in which they explained the process of creating body maps and shared their individual stories. From Thailand, the Body Maps traveled to India where they were exhibited at the 10th International Women and Health Meeting in New Delhi. Initially the audiences were struck by the vibrancy and color of the maps, but then were drawn to spend a lot of time reading the women's experiences of living with HIV and using indigenous healthcare approaches. The exhibit fostered a lot of conversation and reaction as people learned about these women. They found the exhibit beautiful, sad, interesting and masterful. It is a testament to the artists that their work was perceived as both saddening and uplifting, a powerful social message as well as a celebration of life.
Online Exhibit
In March 2006 some of our maps were hosted at the International Museum of Womenís Imagining Ourselves Online Exhibit under the theme of Love and Relationships in a Changing World.
Exhibits in North America
The maps then traveled to Berkeley, USA where they were exhibited at the Momentum 2006 conference before traveling to Toronto for the XVI International AIDS Conference. We displayed prints of the maps in our booth as well as hosting another performance of the body maps in the Global Village where we also distributed our book on the body maps, Our Positive Bodies: Mapping Our Treatment, Sharing Our Choices. In November 2007, TICAH was invited to share our body maps and our other activist art projects with the Women and AIDS Fund of the MS. Foundation at the U.S. Conference on AIDS in Palm Springs, California.
If you are interested in hosting an exhibit of these maps, please contact us at listening@ticahealth.org.