Our Positive Bodies: From Kenya To London

Kenya Mon 17-03-2008

Our Positive Bodies: From Kenya To London
By a Correspondent

By a Correspondent

Art works done by 20 Kenyans living positively with HIV/AIDS have been selected for a private showing at the Brunei Gallery in the Oriental and African studies section, at the University of London. The exhibition, dubbed ‘Our Positive Bodies’, will run from 17 April to 21 June 2008.

“There will be 35 life size works on display at the exhibition, says Xavier Verhoest, who is one of the two facilitators of ‘Body map’ workshops and a curator of the upcoming exhibition, “but 20 of the works on show will be from Kenya”. The rest will be from Thailand and India.

The Art2be organisation, based in Nairobi, will be presenting the works done by the Kenyans at the exhibition. Body mapping in Kenya among people living with HIV/Aids is the brainchild of art2be.

“We have been helping people create body maps for three years now,” says Verhoest, who also co founded art2be. “But it is not just people with HIV/Aids that we target. We work with any marginalised group of people including those affected by gender violence and or those marginalised because of their sexual orientations.

The main aim of this project is to help the affected person express their feelings and emotions through art. In turn it becomes therapeutic for them”.

Body mapping involves the drawing of one’s body outline on a large surface and then using colours, pictures, symbols and or words to represent experiences lived through the body. As one participant puts it: ‘The process of painting ourselves is very powerful’.

After we have shared with one another and feel safe, we lie down on canvas and we trace the outline of our bodies. We choose our colours and symbols with care. We talk and think, and then paint and paint. With each day, our story comes through more clearly. We paint our fears and scars, joys and scars…”

Verhoest and two participants in the body map project will be taking to London body maps made by workshop participants mainly from the Kibera, Korogocho and Mukuru kwa Njenga slums all in Nairobi. Outside Nairobi, we have body maps made by people living in Kisumu.

Verhoest also enlists other local artists like Otieno Kota and Peterson Kamwathi in the body map project to help the participants in making artistic expressions on their maps.

“But we also have other artists who take part in this project because they feel that they were marginalized, perhaps by their families, for choosing art as a profession instead of the mainstream careers,” adds Verhoest. “They both benefit in using the process to heal themselves plus they also use their expertise to help the others taking part in the body mapping”

Xavier Verhoest concludes by saying that body mapping is an art project that is all about a celebration of life.

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