Portraits from a grid / 12th World AIDS Conference exhibition 1998

by Frank Wagner

As part of his project for the exhibition AIDS Worlds, Hentie van der Merwe surveyed people living with HIV and AIDS from various social and ethnic groups in South Africa. The people he interviewed meet twice weekly in an AIDS project in Johannesburg to share their experiences and extend their knowledge about HIV and AIDS. Van der Merwe visualises the descriptions of experiences out of the lives of the individual people which come up for discussion here using photographs of objects chosen by the participants at the groups. This is the sole possibility of fastening onto a personal indication, for the fear of stigmatisation and discrimination precludes portrait photographs. The photos and interview texts are combined into literary portraits which, in turn, are integrated into a framework which reminds one of empirical surveys. From this, it is possible to read off origin, gender, sexual preferences, race, age, and geographical origin.

The interviews give details of the various medical therapies which the individual respondents are undergoing and about any potential participation in medical test sequences. The research and the collation of the material imitate and problematise scientific control and classification structures. The artist's intention is to depict the situation of AIDS in South Africa in contrast to the Western world - a situation which is rapidly turning into a bureaucratic farce in view of the chronic shortage of medical therapies.

Earlier works from Hentie van der Merwe are presented in the catalogue. In these, he has similarly attempted to visualise the subjective condition and social marginalisation by means of a serial structure which mimics the scientific comparative research methods and ethnological/anthropological interest. His results show such acute danger which leaves the people described behind in an intolerant and economically weak system.

Geneva, 1998