Art & Understanding

Gallery

Movable Mural
Dena Stewart and Stewart Stewart Talk to Lester Strong About Healing Through Art

“HIV/AIDS was a natural topic for us to deal with. After all, we live in South Beach, and the Miami, Florida, area has the third largest AIDS population in the country. In the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of our friends here were sick, and a lot were dying. At one point we were going to memorial services at least once a month for people we were close to. It hit us really hard. But no one was talking about it much away from the memorials—no one seemed to know how to talk about it.”
The speaker is Dena Stewart, and she is describing the origins of “What It Feels Like To Live With HIV/AIDS—Movable Mural,” part of a unique program “Telling Stories Through Visuals” which she and her husband Stewart Stewart developed through their nonprofit organization Center for Folk and Community Art (CFCA), which they founded in the early 1990s.

“Telling Stories Through Visuals” is a two-part program involving writing/art workshops and public mural exhibitions, with a twofold aim. Facilitators guide workshop participants through a process in which they visualize a particular issue and how it affects their lives, write narratives about their visualizations, and illustrate the narratives with pictures. The narratives and drawings are then added to a movable, montage-style mural that is displayed in venues all over the country to help educate the general public about the issue. In the words of Stewart Stewart: “We use art first as an intervention in people’s lives, as a way of helping them come to terms with events or situations that have affected or even traumatized them. Then we use the drawings and narratives produced in our workshops as a way of educating the larger public about the issues involved.” To that end, Stewart and Dena not only make sure the murals are displayed publicly in venues all over the country, but secure publicity in the localities where they are shown, arrange for school and civic groups to visit the murals, and offer presentations on the issues involved.
So what is it like to live with HIV/AIDS? According to Dena Stewart: “Despite all the medicines that are keeping people alive so much longer these days, despite over two decades of this disease and knowing how it’s transmitted, it’s still not easy. Take the twelve-year-old boy born with AIDS who wrote in one of our workshops, ‘I hate what I got because nobody wants to touch me.’ Or the thirty-four-year-old heterosexual woman who wrote, ‘My parents said that I should tell people that I have cancer because people would accept that, then my father got drunk and told everyone I have AIDS. I had to move away from the town I grew up in. . . .’ There’s still a lot of ignorance out there about AIDS, and it hurts a lot of people. In our workshops we take aim at the emotional aspects of living with the disease, in order to help relieve the feeling of stigma. Using the mural—now over ninety feet long—we try to open up a dialogue with the general population so they too can learn what it means to live with HIV/AIDS and become part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
Have the workshops and mural made a difference? States Stewart Stewart: “We’ll probably never know the answer to that in regard to everyone who’s attended our workshops or seen the mural. But yes, many of the visuals and narratives produced by participants indicate or project has had a big impact, especially on young people—just look at the drawings and stories by Denis, Alexis, Eddy, and Jamyl.”
Over the years, CFCA has tackled not just HIV/AIDS, but subjects like growing older, getting along with neighbors, traumas resulting from natural disasters like Hurricane Andrew, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, teen date rape, and tobacco use, among others. It has won numerous awards, and in the mid-1990s was selected by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities as one of eight model programs around the country to successfully combine visual art with social services in helping change people’s lives. Although its roots are in Miami Beach, these days its scope and reach are nationwide.
Artists, with backgrounds in education, public relations, and the entertainment industry, Stewart and Dena see their work as a way of giving back something to their community. Comments Stewart: “For me, it suddenly made sense. All I had been doing before was making money and making the egos of my clients feel better. It was such a waste of energy. Now I help others come to terms with parts of their lives they find problematic. It’s a privilege.” Adds Dena: “It’s given me a tremendous perspective on what’s going on in the world. I think we’ve both learned how to take the caring we feel about others and act on it in our lives.”
To learn more about CFCA and the program “What It Feels Like To Live With HIV/AIDS—Movable Mural,” visit the organization’s Web site www.artmurals.org. To bring its HIV/AIDS workshop or mural to your community, contact CFCA by mail at 1800 Michigan Ave., Miami Beach, Florida 33139; by phone at (305) 534-8807; by fax at (305) 538-4081; or by email at cfcamurals@aol.com.

Lester Strong spotlighted artists who have died from AIDS in the February 2003 issue.

IMAGES

Communicating Change
October, 2003

Movable Mural February, 2003

Eddy, age 16

When I lived in Orlando, I had a friend that had HIV. At that time I was 13 years old and I had a close friend who had lost his virginity with a girl that had the virus. This girl got it from her mother who was HIV positive.
At first, I felt extremely sorry for him. Think of it—here is a boy who is 13 and has had a girl friend for 3 years and all this time she had not told him that there was HIV in her blood stream.
He told me one morning and said that no one knew this about him, not even his parents. At first I was shocked. He said that he had no way on how to tell his parents. But two weeks later he had the courage to go up to them with me and tell them.
At first they thought he was kidding, but two months later when he went for his checkup, they found the virus. I remember my mom and his mom going to each other’s houses to comfort his mom.
After all of that, he went to get treatment. I was his friend for one year and then we moved to Miami. But my dad lives in Orlando, and so I get there often. About two weeks ago when I was visiting my dad, I went to Publix and I saw my friend with his mom. He is still alive and he is still with his girl friend. He is now in 11th grade and he is 17 years old. The doctor said that if he keeps this up, he will have many more good years to live.
He said that it’s not that hard. He has to drink a lot of water and take a lot of pills, and once in a while he gets some really tough scares. He said that he gets sick very easily and it can be with him for a long time.
I am proud of my friend because of his courage and motivation for living. He is still my friend.

Denis, age 16

If someone I knew came up to me one day and told me that they have HIV/AIDS, I would probably have no idea what to say. I would be in shock, especially if it was a relative or someone that was really close to me. It would be devastating to hear that, but more devastating is knowing I am not able to do anything to help. But then again, I can. I can support this person by being optimistic about his/her future. Although I know that this person’s future is dim, I would try my very best to make him/her happy and satisfied. Making sure that this person does not become pessimistic about his/her future would also be a goal of mine. I can try to make him or her comfortable and make sure he/she is in an environment that can help him/her feel positive. Scientists may be the ones to find a cure, but I can be the one to change his or her life.

Alexis, age 16

I’m going to tell you about my best friend Joel and something that happened on my birthday, May 5, 1991. On that day, my Mom got a call that told her that Joel was in the hospital. I asked why and she said he had AIDS. I didn’t understand, he looked okay yesterday. I went to visit him in the hospital and saw him in bed. He looked like road kill and was sick as a dog. He explained to me that he became positive because of a blood transfusion he received last summer. He said that because of this virus he (JOEL) didn’t want to be my “best friend.” I shouted, “I want to be YOUR best friend” and for the next three years, every week I visited him at the hospital. He was always happy to see me. When he died, it was the worst day of my life.

Jamyul, age 17

I don’t know anyone that has AIDS, but if I did it wouldn’t make any difference in my life. Personally, I would not want to make this AIDS-infected person feel inferior to anybody or break this person’s heart. For instance, if this person was someone I know I’d comfort him, not hurt his feelings. I wouldn’t say, “Stay away from me, you have AIDS.” I wouldn’t constantly remind him that he has AIDS.
Everyone knows that AIDS is a disease that is fatal to a person’s health, and it can also be spread to another person. But to me that doesn’t make the person an animal that should be kept in a cage because I know that anyone is vulnerable to getting the disease. If I had it I wouldn’t want to be viewed as someone different.