As part of Oberlin College’s observation of HIV/AIDS Awareness Week, an exhibition of HIV/AIDS-oriented visual art was on display in the main lobby of Wilder from Monday through Thursday. The artwork featured in the exhibition was created by College students and community members and represents many different styles and mediums.
The pieces approach the issue of HIV/AIDS from multiple perspectives. Junior Elinor Anderson-Genne’s work combines a compilation of news clippings superimposed over red tissue paper with a monochromatic drawing; “My piece is about the pain of AIDS and the healing. I wanted the reality of the death and the aftermath — how do we remember,” Anderson-Genne said.
Another contributor, sophomore Yuuki Shinomiya, says that his entry, a piece of sand art incorporating a rainbow of colors placed over a map of the world, is symbolic of the vast number of people whose lives are being touched by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “My work is a sand art, and I don’t even know how many grains of sands are in it. The same thing is to the AIDS, I guess. We don’t know exact number of the people who are infected with HIV, and it’s growing. Also, by placing a map under my work, I wanted to say that this is a global issue,” Shinomiya said.
Junior Robin Clark’s entry depicts a person huddled on a path that leads off into a hilly, mountainous terrain where everything is bathed in a yellow light. “I painted this piece at a time [of] pain, loneliness and fear about life and dying. Several months before painting it I had had a serious medical emergency that was life-changing in many ways: I realized how scary dying is, how lonely life can be. I was thinking about how ironic it is to be at the top of a beautiful landscape — life! — but be too frightened of what’s inside to be able to respond or ‘enjoy’ it,” Clark said.
Two of the entries in this year’s show were posters, created by senior Andrea Fritsch and junior Anna Carollo, respectively. Fritsch’s poster, which shows the red circulatory system of a torso superimposed over a blue street map on a background of shades of pink, was created to advertise “a speaker whose work deals with AIDS and pandemics. [The poster is] about how blood runs through cities, [with] streets for veins,” Fritsch said.
The other poster, created by Carollo, was this year’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Week poster. “My main goal in the poster was to convey the information about HIV/AIDS Awareness Week as simply and clearly as possible. I wanted people to notice the red ribbon as they walked by, and to take a second to think about the fact that it is HIV/AIDS Awareness Week,” Carollo said.
Other works in the show include first-year Caitlin Cardina’s charcoal drawing displaying the hope and determination of AIDS patients, a construction paper depiction of the faces of HIV/AIDS by April Tatum, a work on wood by an anonymous artist showing different aspects of the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, and a glass and translucent paper creation by Jessie Perlick
The arts community has a good reputation for being concerned about HIV/AIDS issues. “As an artist, I think that it is important to create art that is a part of the present, and AIDS is a part of my story,” Anderson-Genne said. Fritsch seemed to summarize the feelings of all the contributors, “I think art is a good catalyst for thinking about complicated and difficult issues.”
In another HIV/AIDS week activity, installation art — a gigantic red ribbon — will be created in front of Wilder using sticks and cloth. Senior Amanda Boege, who is sponsoring the art, said: “I have a pretty good picture of it in my head, hopefully that will actually appear as I want it tommorrow.” Posters with statistics relating HIV to college age students will also be postered around Wilder Bowl.