Poz Women Show Off!
The stories and artistic creations of HIV positive women in British Columbia
Women’s stories are important lenses to understanding life with HIV, both in popular culture and academia. But they are often missed or mired in social stigma.
In response, a collective of women living with HIV decided to “Show Off” in an arts-based workshop and public art installation at Theatre SKAM located on the traditional and unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples as well as the Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEĆ peoples (colonially known as Victoria, British Columbia) in January 2022.
We use the term women broadly since we are a group that includes and welcomes cisgender women, Two-Spirit individuals, trans people, and non-binary folks. Co-led by HIV activist and artist, Peggy Frank, and arts-based researcher and certified sexual health educator, Dr. Leah Tidey, the women’s collective explored various art forms as methods of self-expression and knowledge sharing about the impact of HIV on women. This community-based project adds women’s stories of living with HIV to existing and archived data from the “HIV In My Day” project, a collaboration between academic researchers and community partners that has produced a digital archive of 117 oral history interviews conducted in British Columbia with long-term survivors of HIV and their caregivers.
Watch the video here!
Listen Now
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Listen Now 〰️
HIV Taught Me To Fly
Speaker 1
In the beginning, my light in the dark was very dull.
In the beginning, my light in the dark was quiet chaos.
In the beginning, the dark was ominous, exhausting –
Scary.
Speaker 2 -
Disclosure - a can of worms.
They called me, "contaminated."
“Despicable,” “dangerous,” “dirty.”
Stigma darkens my Raven’s call;
Never more, never more* - sounding a death toll.
No hope. Exhausted, sad.
My days are darkest at night.
Speaker 3
Salmon begin their lives in the dark.
Tree seeds begin life in the depths of the cone.
I too began life in a dark place.
Not even a belly button skylight.
Now submerged in a frightening, quiet abyss.
Secrecy and terror of stigma and death.
… Morbid musings …
Not even sure there’s a point in considering it
… So I won't.
Speaker 4
I kicked at my dark until it bled daylight.*
Love and affection from good friends.
Healing.
Now my light is a tangle of colourful chaos.
Now my light is brilliant.
The darkest days can have calm moonlit nights.
Speaker 5
Gloomy memories - a foggy, distant shore,
Vaguely trapped in old journals and notes,
Dusty and greasy, found under the fridge,
In ancient jacket pockets,
Forgotten, discarded like rotten fruit.
Speaker 6
Challenge the system, the doctors, the meds;
Challenge society,
Challenge even myself.
Later, my life became a series of controlled black and white explosions.
Eventually, my light brightens.
And shimmering sun beams fill me with hope.
Warmed by the Poz* community.
Speaker 7
The train, the bus, the plane.
Piloted by others.
Flying out of my control.
My feet, my bike, my car.
Following my heart.
Can you, Raven, teach me to fly?
Trickster!
I'm not angry, I'm not sad.
I just live my life as though I'm not going to die…
Anytime soon.
I can love, breathe deeply, and smile.
Fluttering beauty of life,
Hope.
Speaker 8
Now my light glows within,
Enhanced by good friends, love, and affection,
The Pozzies*,
Nature, peas and carrots, cabbage butterflies and flowers, fresh air.
The Raven calls,
Only a distant echo:
Ever more, ever more.
Darkness dims,
There is peace.