AFEW-CI

The AFEW Culture Initiative is a project initiated by AFEW International against the backdrop of the International AIDS 2018 Conference.

As the curator, I chose the format of an artistic ‘placement’ residency for our cultural programme, as a vehicle towards social engagement in pressing issues surrounding HIV/AIDS. There is a special focus on stigma and discrimination, directed towards themes such as sex workers’ health rights, access to preventive (partial) anti-retroviral therapy (PrEP) and the rights of people who use drugs. The placement of the artists in socially-motivated organisations collaborating in the project allows us to grant our resident artists direct access to the issues they are focusing on, away from the traditional white cube setting.

Artists from the Eastern Europe and Central Asian (EECA) region came to live and work in the Netherlands for a period of three months. The artists are ‘placed’ outside of the traditional studio/gallery/ museum environment and ‘displaced’ into a social, public health (HIV/AIDS) context at a wide range of organizations such as amongst others the Academic Medical Centrum (AMC), and De Regenboog Groep’s Drug Consumption Room (DCR).

Artist: Hassan Kurbanbaev, Hanna Zubkova, Lado Darakhvelidze, Ilya federov-Fedotov, Gohar Smoyan