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If you have followed OYO news regularly, you know that in 2007, OYO launched the photo project, Still Life, giving graphic expressions to the fact that someone living with the HIV virus can still have a positive and happy life. The basic idea behind this project is that people living with HIV and/or AIDS (PLWHA) take photos of positive, happy moments in their daily lives. These become an exhibition of positive snapshots, still images of their views of the world. They themselves do not appear on the photographs, as they are the photographers, but they allow us to look positively at the world they inhabit.
The exhibition was most successful and was presented in the Kunene and Erongo regions in Namibia (2008), in Windhoek at the FNCC (2008) but got its greatest success abroad: Mexico (2008), South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and the UK (Newcastle - 2009). It has been invited to Scotland where it’ll be exhibited at the Parliament in September 2010.
Despite this great international success, it has been very difficult to secure funding to present it in various regions in Namibia. OYO was therefore most pleased that an agreement was signed with VSO/Personele Samenwerking Ontwikkelingslanden to tour the exhibition in nine of Namibia’s regions in 2010. The exhibition successfully toured in Oshana, Omusati, Ohangwena, Oshikoto and Kavango regions in February and March 2010, reaching 15,335 people. It will tour Karas, Hardap, Omaheke and Otjozondjupa regions in June/July 2010.
In 2008, OYO was invited by p.art.ners for a dance project in Berlin. During the visit, OYO’s director had the chance to meet with representatives from ZIK (Zuhause im Kiez), a German organisation supporting drug addicts living with HIV and/or AIDS. ZIK has a special program using Arts therapy as a tool to help patients. Their programs are most effective and allow people who often have to deal with complicated psychological issues to express themselves, their fears, their hopes and ultimately define new goals in their lives.
Arts Still therefore presents pieces from both Still Life and the ZIK exhibition, demonstrating from two complementary angles the power of Arts in curbing the impact of the HIV pandemic.
The exhibition opened at the Goethe Centre on 14 April and will run till 31 April. The opening was not as well attended as expected, but journalists and our local TV broadcast NBC were present. The project will therefore receive good exposure.
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