Finland - South Africa Association will exhibit bodymaps of South African women in Helinä Rautavaara Museum 10.9.2010 - 10.1.2011

The cultural project of Finland - South Africa Association in 2010 is an exhibition of self-portaits of hiv-positive women in Khayelitsha. The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs' NGO-department has pledged 9 000 euros for the project. 

In the self-portraits exhibited ten hiv-positive women from Khayelitsha-township outside Cape Town in South Africa explore their lives as hiv-positive women by drawing human-size images of themselves. The hand-painted and written bodymaps are visually and textually rich, and speak not only of HIV but also of the lives of township women in more general terms.

The bodymaps have been produced in workshops organized by the University of Cape Town. They have thus far been exhibited for example in the National Gallery of Cape Town, in various galleries in USA and also as part of the Cambridge Art Museum Assembling Bodies -exhibition.

The main project partner of Finland - South Africa Association is Helinä Rautavaara Museum in Espoo, where the exhibition will be shown from 10th September 2010 to 10th January 2011. Thereafter the bodymaps will tour various libraries and schools in Finland. Other partners in the project are The Foundation of the Deaconess Institute, Family Federation (Väestöliitto) and the HIV-foundation.

Attached to the exhibition Ubuntu-catalogue will be published and a seminar is being planned for the fall.

Bodymaps can be viewed at http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/Research_Units/CSSR/ASRU/body_maps.asp

More information:
Petra Jääskeläinen petrajaa(at)hotmail.com
Annu Kekäläinen annukekalainen(at)gmail.com