| Publication Year | 2014 |
| Volume Number | Vol 16 |
| Issue Number | Issue 1 |
| Pages | 116-129 |
| Journal Title | Africa Journal of Nursing and Midwifery |
| Author(s) | |
| Author Affiliation(s) |
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| Affiliation(s) | University of Cape Town |
| Subject(s) | |
| ISSN | 16825055 |
| Indexed By | Sabinet Online |
| Language | English |
| Accreditation(s) | DOE |
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
New Article Published:
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Monday paper
Volume 32.02
25 February 2013 |
HAICU wall supports march
HAICU and ACES launched an online campaign partnering with the UCT We Say: "Enough!" protest march. The campaign encourages UCT students and staff to talk about the reasons for marching. Students and staff posed for photographs with their personal messages calling for action. In picture are (from left, back) Zine Jobela, Cal Volks, and Sianne Abrahams. (Front) Stella Kyobula Mukoza and Lucina Reddy.
A collage of these pictures can be viewed online at HAICU Facebook page.
Addressing HIV Stigma- Not just prevention- through Art
| Monday paper Volume 31.08 18 May 2012 |
Stigma was tackled in word and art at UCT's Candlelight Memorial – themed Shine Light. Stop Stigma – on 10 May.
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On request from the HIV/AIDS Institutional Co-ordination Unit (HAICU), 62 fine-arts students on the foundation course at the Michaelis School of Fine art had set up a series of exhibitions in which they investigated the theme. One challenge set for the students by lecturer Fabian Saptouw was to make the pieces "interactive", and to get a dialogue of sorts going with viewers. "Because it needs to be a conversation that we're all able to have with each other," said student Helen Aadnesgaard. In pictures (clockwise from top): Saptouw and students Michelle Aucamp and Aadnesgaard; Tamsyn Dodds, Laura Chittenden, Jolandi Coetzee, Cleo du Plessis, Elize de Beer, Kasey Davies and Kate Eriksen with their condom vending machine; Pam Bentley and Jane Matthews show off some of their creations; and passer-by Ndlela Sithembile gets up close to another of the pieces
Seminar Presentation at Freie University Berlin as Part of Erasmus Mundus Scholarship
R
Trip to Germany June 2014
an In
Art explores HIV prevention and Sexual Concurrency
30 August 2012
Passers-by on UCT's upper campus turned into spectators when, last week, a group of UCT students translated sexual concurrency into art.
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| Bread and bed: Student Bronwyn Katz at the HAICU exhibition. | Caught up: A web of yarn represents the links created by sexual concurrency. |
In collaboration with HAICU and under the guidance of art lecturer Fabian Saptouw, the first-year art students constructed a number of artworks that explored the third-term theme of UCT's HIV/AIDS Institutional Co-Ordination Unit (HAICU), Sexual Concurrency and HIV Prevention.
A mazy web of yarn that viewers struggle to negotiate, representing the smothering nature of the concurrency web, to a mattress overflowing with human-shaped cut-outs of bread that harked back to Tracy Emin's 1998 artwork My Bed and was said to represent the potential population that are susceptible to contracting the virus as a result of sexual concurrency.
Saptouw said because the exhibition was student-driven, it gave the message a different - and welcome - legitimacy among students than the more frequent "top-down" and passive delivery of the anti-HIV message.
"My main interest is getting students to think in a different way about art and social responsibility," he said. "It's about students at [students'] level engaging with you about the disease in a way that's a little bit different to the way the message is normally carried out, that I think that's the most effective thing about the project."
Pictured below. Presenting on this topic at The HEAIDS 2012 Conference;
AIDS Awareness Event 2012
UCT Festival of Desire 2012
My organisation HAICU addressing Masculinities through Art
| Monday paper Volume 33.05 17 June 2014 |
The UCT first rugby team donned lace and felt practice jerseys for Liesl Brenzel's project which challenged perceptions of masculinity. Her work was part of a third-year elective for new media students - a result of a partnership between the Michaelis School of Fine Art and HAICU.
- By placing rainbow cushions against more impervious structures in and around the campus and city, third-year Michaelis student Julia Kabat invites passers-by to consider the vulnerability and fragility of those who experience prejudice.
- Made from hollow-cast wax, Julian Gasson and Raees Saaiet's third-year installation One Hundred Hollow Men refers to both the literal hollowness of the figures, and rigid masculine qualities sometimes favoured in society rather than inner strength.
- HIV stigma was the focus of this first-year Michaelis student's installation in the Molly Blackburn Hall. With the aim of making people confront their own prejudices around HIV/AIDS-related issues, students lounge against pillows made from condoms, taking the 'private' - in this case a bedroom - into a public space.
A group of third-year Michaelis School of Fine Art students have been experimenting with everyday objects, using them in public art interventions to open up spaces for what can sometimes be difficult conversations: around gender, sexual identity, and the choices we make.
When sculpture student Liesl Brenzel dressed the UCT first rugby team in practice jerseys made of lace and felt, she was making a statement about perceptions of masculinity. After the practice session, the team signed a jersey and Brenzel had it box framed, to replicate the traditional aesthetic of rugby memorabilia.
This 'public intervention', titled Die Manne, was for a third-year new media elective, 'Public Practice and Socially Responsive Art: Exploring masculinities and HIV/AIDS.' According to the elective outline, there's a dearth of knowledge focused on the relationship between HIV, retroviral treatment and masculinity. Through this work, Brenzel wanted to investigate how these men would be perceived if there was any change to the status quo.
To try to address this knowledge gap and encourage critical discussion and reflection, Michaelis School of Fine Art elective lecturer Fabian Saptouw and his students have been working in partnership with UCT's HIV/AIDS, Inclusivity and Change Unit (HAICU) since 2012, exploring the connection between contemporary constructions of masculinity and HIV through art production and intervention.
"Art is being used in public spaces in an informal and interactive way, making it widely accessible, to engage people about HIV/AIDS," says Saptouw. "Our students are not standing back from tackling social issues and messages. And this is where art and education intersect."
Many of the artworks use everyday objects to convey their messages and create space for discussion.
"In that process of doing, and in discussion, is where the shift happens in the students' understanding of these social issues and the artwork," says Saptouw.
Thinking and process are vital to the ways we look at the world; and as much as the art is about meaning, it's also about the process of making, acting and creating art, he explains.
"The process gets the students thinking critically about how we understand the role of art. On a small scale these projects are shifting people's relationship to art as well. Creating an artwork in response to these social issues gives students agency, and they become active participants in the discussion instead of passively absorbing information. They feel they are doing something."
As the students' public artworks open up issues around HIV/AIDS, students begin to talk to other students. "And in speaking to their peers, the students become HAICU ambassadors," notes Saptouw.
Story by Helen Swingler. Photos courtesy of Fabian Saptouw.
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