"Banned" by Gonkar Gyatso

(Tibet; © Art For Humanity)

 

Dr Vishakha N. Desai

(President of Asia Society, U.S.A.)

Societies express themselves through their art. Throughout history people have turned to the arts to convey their identity and culture, their feelings of tradition and of change, to emphasize what is considered good and to dispel what is bad. Artists are instrumental cultural messengers, reminding us of who we are and who we would like to be.

At Asia Society we believe in connecting people to find solutions to urgent issues and we strive to bring communities together from across the world. Art has always played an important role in achieving our goal. People can introduce themselves and their ideas to each other, creating a climate for conversations that enable a deeper understanding and context for the pressing issues of the day.

One of the urgent issues today is the scourge of HIV/AIDS. AIDS is a disease that affects our physical bodies. Yet, it has also been allowed to scourge through our communities through its' cultural stigma. The stigma associated with HIV and AIDS prevents lifesaving information and treatment from reaching those at risk and most in need.

Real Stories Gallery is bringing together a global community of artists and storytellers, to heal our communities - traumatized by this contemporary catastrophe and is thus seeking to dispel the destructive stigma assigned to HIV and AIDS, so millions of lives can be saved.

I urge you to seize the opportunity afforded today by Real Stories Gallery. Through images and stories, let us come together to break the silence of fear and shame surrounding HIV and AIDS. Through such creativity, we can inspire a new culture in which everyone will be free to receive lifesaving HIV prevention and so that all may live freely with dignity and respect.

 

"Blood Vessels" by Isaac Mohale

(artist/teacher, South Africa)

Goodday, I like to double thanks to anyone who make Real Stories Gallery become successful. Here in South Africa I'm strive to tell the story from my side since I'm livin in poor area with low background. Much Love.

 

Professor Philip Goulder

(Pediatrician & Research Immunologist, HIV Infection & Immune Control Group, University of Oxford, U.K.)

We watch carefully the people who inspire us, and listen to the stories they tell us; what we learn from them shapes what we understand, how we feel and how we act in the world.

 

George W. Kizza

(artist, Uganda)

Thank you so much for Real Stories Gallery. Forever I will always be grateful. Hope all goes on well as we struggle to make HIV/AIDS a myth. HIV/AIDS is a reality, do not relax!

 

Professor Paul Webley

(Director of School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, U.K.)

Stories and narratives help define who we are, and help us understand our world and what it means to be human. And the stories on the magnificent Real Stories Gallery will do all that - but will also have an impact on the world, and help reduce the spread of HIV.

 

Gregory Alan Peters

(poet, USA)

Thank you Real Stories Gallery.  I live in Toledo, Ohio a depressed region of the U.S. I have been writing for only two and one half years, after coming clean from a thirty year heroin addiction four and a half years ago.  After experiencing homelessness I needed a new muse and I found it in poetry. This is a place I can share my life with people in very real way; and most importantly make difference for someone – somewhere. If what I write makes a difference to one person it all worth it. It's all about all of us.  I write in honor of every homeless person -- living and dead.

 

Daniel Ben-Horin

(Founder and Co-Ceo TechSoup Global, U.S.A.)

I have watched Real Stories Gallery evolve from the outset - a pure vision encountering huge obstacles, but never wavering. The result is what you see: An inspiration to all of us, a path forward for our hearts and minds (and bodies) and a reminder of how technology is there to fulfill human creativity and meet human needs.

 

Jan Jordaan

(Artist, South Africa. Director of Art For Humanity; Fine Art Lecturer; Partner of Real Stories Gallery; Winner of "Too Little Too Late Award, South Africa)

Art for Humanity announces this important partnership with Real Stories Gallery, a global arts based initiative with the common objective of inspiring HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness in all. We firmly belief that science and technology can only be of benefit to humanity when developed and applied within the context and recognition of Culture, Human Rights and Social Justice, and the arts provides still the most important vehicle for sustainable social transformation.

 

Professor Andrew Tomkins, CICH

(Institute of Child Health, University of London)

Working with children who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS involves pain and passion but words are often inadequate to express the deepest feelings and responses.  Art and poetry however often communicate in deeper ways reaching our inner lives to bring truth and realisation.  They also release new strength for respect, care and compassion.

 

Zuleika Kingdon and Martin Briggs-Watson

(co-Founders of Distant Object Productions, UK)

We are delighted to partner with Real Stories and are proud to help communicate Real Stories' objectives by enthusiastically supporting this global human rights HIV prevention and awareness initiative.

 

 Carolyn Sryley-Moore

(poet, U.S.A.)

“Writing to the Law // for Real Stories Gallery (& Rachel) 12/5/10”

I am writing to the law she says, to change the law. Horribly

All that Hitler did was legal in the law, King wrote, or said somewhere.

& where are the rules against the genocide of Darfur?

In one's own home, writing to the law.

Making papermache sculptures of the saints, that are oneself.

Sleeping through the intersection of church & faith.

What do you leave in your locker

but statues of what you want to become, to be, what you want

to change? All is contextual.

Writing about sexual abuse, one must write about sex,

but it is contextual. I am writing to the law to change the law, she says,

this woman of five foot three,

"you could eat soup off my head," she says //

& outside the dressingroom window

the world is on fire, children are on fire, we are on fire

trying to revolutionize the dying

by simply speaking words out loud //

man, horse, God, dolphin // choosing a word & speaking it aloud

with the tenderness of a brain taken from its shell

the Braille of a brain taken from its shell

& sold on the streetcorner with children of Brazil

France New York Turkey. I am writing to the law she says

calling the cops on the cops

calling the Gestapo on the Gestapo //

I am writing with blood not fingernail polish

amulets of blood.

 

Aad de Gids

(poet, The Netherlands)

“legitimacy of 'real stories'"

The paradox of how the designer of a site “against aids," childpornography, childtrafficking, sexploitation of youth, the merging in this matter of the sick people, the victims, the international law for human rights and the arts, the scientists and the artists, has to worry about the legality of her site: “rsg”= "real stories gallery”.

But the law that then could be applied to rsg is as complex as the content of rsg is.  for instance, if there would be childpornography on rsg, it is never there in the first place, and if it is in derivative ways, then that has to be subject to specific parts of the law too.  also the fact that the purpose of rsg is, the erradication of human abuse, childtrafficking, youthpornography, youthsexwork andyouthexploitation, is seems to me to be difficult as a lawyer to formulate one case against it.  the best thing you did was build in "booby traps" of information, of, "this content is not meant for younger people", etc., and also about the explicit nature of what is been spoken about.

Also being, after all, one of the goals of rsg, to try to diminish the risk on getting contacted/contracted with hiv/aids, and writing explicitly about that, and then still continuously under consideration the cultural differences which determines about what to speak where and not about what elsewhere.  so i think you've already gone to great lengths to "depornify" rsg. 

It has the same dilemma tim [barrus, visual poet, USA] stood for, being a pedagoger, but also explicit in the sexual content of his writing about adolescent boys for whom a major part of their lives is: sex, even doubled, also as "freed" sexworkers, how then to ever entamise any subject like this without speaking about it?  will any site about aids really have as well scientific - as streetcredibility, then i think you outdid yourself by inviting a great variety on people and also in implementing a successful merging with the arts.