Zimbabwe

Fighting Aids through arts

By Martin Chemhere, Harare mchemhere@yahoo.com

_{Throughout the world the arts have and continue to make a major role in positively influencing the way people think about certain social, economic and political situations bringing beneficial transformation to civic society.}

_{In Zimbabwe, tertiary institutions and international artists such as Africa University and world renowned artist and photographer Marcos Villata Pucci are separately but with one purpose – fighting against diseases – organizing major conferences and rolling out multimedia based messages respectively that will impact positively in the quest to ameliorate the scourge of AIDS.}

_{Zimbabwe based Africa University, a United Methodist related institution – in this month of March organizing an arts festival directed at among other things fighting the deadly HIV – AIDS.}

_{The annual festival of the arts and culture, now in its third installment, will tackle probably the world’s most dreaded disease to date in an atmosphere of artistic therapy and exchange.}

_{An academic conference focusing on art culture and development with main focus on HIV/AIDS will be held under the theme “Celebrating the arts and cultural diversity at Africa’s Premier International University”.}

_{Arts administrator and festival coordinator, Owen Soda commented on this uplifting realization in a local daily “People talk about HIV/AIDS these days and it should not be a matter of health institutions dealing with the problem alone but the arts and culture have to be involved”.}

_{The seminar will, therefore be an opportunity for various individuals and organisations to come and discuss how their discipline (arts and culture) can continuously be used to address the pandemic” he was further quoted.}

_{Featuring performing arts and an academic conference, the annual festival of the arts and culture, which has grown in local popularity since its inception will this time draw participants from southern African countries such as Angola, Mozambique and South Africa.}

_{To add impact to the various messages on HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe, internationally acclaimed artist Marcos Villata Pucci on Tuesday 6 March, opened an HIV/AIDS based exhibition at the Gallery Delta in Harare.}

_{“In Marcos Villata’s work there is always an emphasis on the crises facing the people of Africa, yet it is never overstated, with the compositions beautifully executed, and leaving the viewer to think and interpret. “It is my hope, the exhibition crosses the gulf from the gallery, to the streets and onward to the oval dwellers and the whole region?” wrote renowned Zimbabwean artist and gallery co-owner Helen Lieros in a flyer to a HIV/AIDS exhibition.}

_{The show traveled from Bulawayo where it showed last month and served as a stark reminder, for the umpteenth time, about the detriment, devastation, destitution continuously caused by the pandemic on Zimbabweans and Africans wide.}

_{A multi artistic mix of images, the show was aptly titled Ayelapheki/ There is no cure and it brought to the fore on one hand the creative concepts by Macros Villata Pucci an internationally acclaimed South American currently working in Zimbabwe and on the other the fact that art is equally effective in relaying messages tackling society’s ills.}

_{It is after viewing these images – on walls, flying on strings tied on the roof, reading the sobering words in testimony form as well as getting into the minds of the dejected people in the pictures that it is loud and clear Africa is not merely facing a crisis but under siege from the pandemic.}

_{His multimedia installation uses photographs, photocollages, graphic mobiles, videos, interviews and data, giving people a chance to reflect on the AIDS pandemic and those affect by it.}

_{Using a photocollage technique, he has created images that examine the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic across the races. His work has been exhibited in several rural and urban centers in Zimbabwe as well as in other countries in Southern Africa.}

_{Ayelapheki/There is no cure is the latest portfolio, surging with messages of hope, togetherness in an era of unprecedented devastation, re-collected from the last three years of creativity.}

_{Macros Villata Pucci began his professional career as a photographer and a video maker in Latin America in the early 80s. from 2003, he started to document HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.}