Art in the Open "AiO"
Art in the Open (AiO) is a citywide event that celebrates artists, their inspirations for creating art, and their relationships with the urban environment. Art in the Open debuted in June 2010, bringing a selected group of artists to the Schuylkill Banks - from the historic Fairmount Water Works to Bartram's Garden - to inspire new ways of seeing the river and the city it runs through. For four days, June 9-12, thirty-five artists worked outside in a creative process open to everyone.
BEBASHI
BEBASHI was founded in 1985 in response to the increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS in the African American community of Philadelphia. We are a full-service HIV/AIDS case management agency with a special interest in serving low-income people of color with HIV disease. Our mission is to provide culturally sensitive health related information, direct service, research, and technical assistance to the urban community.
Our programs are designed to meet the needs of the underserved community and our educational efforts focus on street outreach to areas of the community most in need of prevention information and direct care services to those who are least likely to receive it. In 2004 we provided services to 15,000 Philadelphians and over 500,000 individuals since 1985.
On the installation "Out on the Table BEBASHI"
I have wanted to work with the wax tablecloths of my Grandmother for a while. These cloths remind me of family meals and make me nostalgic for my Grandmother’s home, which was filled with these kinds of patterns. I brought these to the park and invited the organisation BEBASHI, a 25 year old local community health organisation which focuses on HIV/AIDS in the Black community, to visit me over several days to be sketched.
Whilst sketching workers and clients of the organisation, I began to discuss some of the ways in which HIV/AIDs was affecting them. One woman who due to being unaware of the risks or consequences of hugging her child refused to do so for two years after testing HIV positive due to fear of infecting her . This is unfortunately symptomatic of the lack of readily available information about this global epidemic amongst the black community and with this in mind I began to consider how I might look at this situation in my artwork.
I recalled that my grandmother was always so careful to protect her home that she often covered tables with protective wax tablecloths, put plastic runners on the floor to protect the carpet and even covered sofas with plastic casing. Essentially, her home was in effect shrink-wrapped for fear of damage or wear and tear.
As I grew older I found this to be the case amongst many Black family homes and when considering my experiences at the BEBASHI centre, I found the juxtaposition of the highly protected home and the epidemic of AIDS/HIV, which in part is caused by failure to use protection to be an interesting way to approach this issue.
The work includes images of traditional West Indian foods one might find upon a dining table coupled with the hand painted images of the BEBASHI workers and clients, interwoven with collaged partially or completely unlabeled medical diagrams of the life cycle of the HIV virus. It was a privilege to work with BEBASHI and a joy to be able to put this art "out in the open".
