One of the rooms was exhibited in the city hall of Amsterdam. It was accessible for anyone who happened to be in the area.
House of Hiv – Fluid Dialogues
This work is an open dialogue in which people living with HIV tell their stories. It puts the emphasis on lived experience and personal stories rather than numbers and statistics that often dominate the discourse around HIV.
It combines microscopic images of blood from donors living with HIV and mixes them with their personal stories, constantly recombining stories and images and through that creating an ever changing, intertwining tapestries of lives affected by HIV.
It’s easy to slip into a behavior that is discriminating if actions are guided by fear. But it is important to remain empathetic towards people who must battle prejudices and judgments that come with a virus others try to protect themselves from. Caution towards HIV can easily turn into an aversive fear towards a person living with it. What we need though is empathy and not fear.
Stigma is a protective mechanism against the fear of contracting HIV, it creates an ‘us and them’ narrative, people at risk and those who are not, creating distance intended to act as a safeguard. This work promotes a recognition that there is no ‘us & them’ – we are all ‘us’.
Fluid Dialogues is made by Basse Stittgen, microENVISION, Juan Arturo Garcia and Andrés García Vidal in cooperation with Leo Schenk and hello gorgeous magazine.
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Photos of Fluid Dialogues in the City Hall:
