AIDS Narrative Murals

"I felt that the AIDS issue has such tragic and heroic proportions that a visual form was needed to convey the drama and urgency of the issue and it’s execution must be in a manner that was stark, elegant and humane. I thought back to an idea that I had used in the past in collaborative projects using the tradition of Greek vases from the 4th-6th century. These vases were not only functional but important visual images in their time. For a largely illiterate society without the flood of imagery we take for granted today, these visual narratives carried the same impact a billboard has today on a deserted stretch of road. I believe that the message about AIDS has to have a hammer blow impact-and it must reach the public already drowning in images, news and sound bites.

The project began with a slide lecture about the art history of the vases. Since the women had already begun to write how AIDS had affected their lives in other classes we discussed how certain Greek words such as:tragedy, heroic, stoic, chaos, pathos, are part of the lexicon used to describe the struggle with AIDS. From their writing we chose recurring topics for our mural panels: professional and emotional support, community awareness, living with the disease and mourning the loss of so many loved ones. They acted out these various themes and we drew them full scale by tracing their bodies and shadows directly onto large brown paper. These life size figures became the narratives inside the monumental vases shapes, we used two forms: the "Kraters"- expansive, bold shaped urns used to commemorate victories in battle and "Lekythos," tall slim vessels that held oil for libations to the dead."