Bangkok, 16 mar (EFE).-the works by 16 artists from different countries are displayed starting tomorrow in Bangkok to raise awareness of the causes and the reality of AIDS within the exhibition “You Are Not Alone” (“aren’t you just”) of the ArtAids Foundation.
The President of the institution, Han Nefkens, told Efe that the sample, which will remain open until May 20, includes the creations of authors from countries like Chile, England, Lithuania, Morocco, South Africa or Thailand.
“Are international artists, each with their cultural identity, expressing his vision of HIV and AIDS through art, which is a reflection of the reality,” explained Dutch collector and writer.
“We want to make the viewer think.” “AIDS has declined worldwide, but it is one growing problem among young people, especially among men who have sex with other men, even if they are not all homosexuals”, added Nefkens.
The exhibition hosted in the Bangkok Art Cultural Center includes works from various disciplines, from photography to the audiovisual montage, with messages aimed at ending the stigmatization of the disease.
The Chilean Lorraine Zilleruelo presents a video testimony about a woman who is infected by her boyfriend and that is tackle the disease with therapy through tango classes.
“We have included Thai artists who give a particular vision of AIDS, as Ohm Phanpiroj, which in several photographs portraying sick children with their eyes open, in representation of reality, and then with eyes closed, imagining the profession that they like to exercise major, such as pilot or doctor,” he detailed Nefkens.
Other artists who exhibit include Deimantas Narkevicius Lithuanian, Moroccan Latifa Echakhck, Vietnamese Danh Vo, Cypriot Christodoulos Panayiotou, holandés-estadounidense Otto Berchem or Thai Pratchaya Phinthong.
A work of the Pepe Espaliú Spanish, who died of AIDS in 1993, closed the exhibition.
Is a video that shows a human chain formed by friends of Espaliú that transport in aloft from the Congress of deputies to the Puerta del Sol in Madrid.
The founder of ArtAids cited “self-marginalization” of victims of AIDS as one of the main obstacles to ending the social stigma of this disease.
“Those infected with the virus have a normal life with medication, without hardly a danger of contagion, but most prefer to take it in secret,” said Nefkens.
Believe the Dutch, more effective weapons against the disease are condoms and regular AIDS testing, something that “many young people don’t know or don’t want to do”.
Nefkens founded ArtAids in 2006 inspired by an art show on AIDS he witnessed in Thailand two years earlier. EFE
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