‘Leaving an Impression’ explores the relationship between physical and emotional touch. The pieces below were created in a series of workshops run in collaboration with the Terrence Higgins Trust. Participants were asked to contribute words or images that meant something to them and then use different methods of affective touch and printing to illustrate their emotional connection to the media.
The images below are self-portraits that both illustrate the impact of HIV stigma and challenge it. They are interspersed with the participants’ stories, experiences, and reflections. Together, their words and images both illustrate the impression that HIV stigma has left on them, and challenge the continuation of harmful views, misunderstandings, and misconceptions by drawing attention to them.
“It is important to understand how stigma can be so painful, but that it’s a process you can release yourself from over time. Stigma can actually impact your life, impact you, the image of yourself. You can feel like a monster when you see yourself”.
“The nurse doing my Covid-19 vaccine didn’t want to touch my shoulder. When I told her that I have HIV the nurse jumped up to get gloves. She had no understanding of HIV. I wanted to cry, to be angry, but also I wanted to be understanding. There’s nothing in nurse training about HIV: they get one week about sexual health over 3 or 4 years of training. They don’t know”.
“My dentist’s forms ask the question ‘Do you have a transmittable disease?’ and list HIV/AIDS as an option. But I don’t. It’s not transmittable, it’s suppressed, it’s undetectable”.
“Whenever I go to my doctor, he always asks first if my health problem is HIV related—even if it’s got nothing to do with HIV, like a broken thumb. This happens a lot, and it stops people from going to their GP”.
“Someone said to me ‘it doesn’t look like you’ve got HIV’”.
“Touching is a very human thing and we all need that”.
“When I see the sky, wake up, go to, sleep: the colours in the morning are beautiful, the sun rising. My diagnosis is never gone. It is always with me”.
“Over time, touch can become smoother. It doesn’t mean that the emotion wasn’t there. If I had done this exercise at an earlier time, I would probably have cried. Now I’ve got a different relationship to the poem. It’s almost like I own it now”.
“Touching can give you a release, like going to a rage room, to release emotion, except it doesn’t have to be angry”.
“It’s a learning process to learn that touch is varied, that it doesn’t need to be associated with aggression”.
11 responses to “Leaving an Impression”
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This is so powerful, thank you for sharing!
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This has really hit home how much stigma still exists, and how much further we have to go. Thank you for sharing your stories. Sending love to all!
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A creative and powerful way of highlighting misunderstanding and stigma affecting is many.
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These pieces are beautiful, as is the entire concept of this project. I’m sure this work will do a great deal for HIV awareness – I have certainly learned a lot from these thought-provoking works of art.
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Works of beauty made with strokes of ink like flying birds.
Power and strength radiate from these works,catching the sadness, the anger, the loneliness and setting us all free. -
Really thought provoking work, interesting and enlightening
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Such a beautiful and powerful project that highlights how much stigma HIV still has in 2024.
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Such moving words and images.
You are all so strong and perfectly demonstrate how powerful touch is. -
Such beautiful and moving work. I commend each of the artists for their bravery and personal fortitude. Nothing short of inspirational.
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What a great way to creatively engage with the subject. Very thought provoking and powerful!
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This is such a beautiful and powerful project. The cohesion of the images build such a strong and clear message of the impact that stigma has on the well-being of people living with health conditions. Perfectly executed and deeply moving. Well done to everyone involved. I hope lots of people get to see this.
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