Saturday May 8th.

At 4.30 p.m Island of Gorée, near Dakar

At the Dak’art Biennale Off

Tous ensemble is an exhibition by ArtAids for Dak’art Off, part of the Dakar Biennale. African and European artists will work together, inspired by the subject of AIDS – the North and South joining forces to tackle a subject that affects us all.
Tous ensemble will be held in Senegal, as part of the Dakar Biennale’s Off-program, on the volcanic Island of Gorée, with its painful past of slavery and liberation and the conciliatory idea that we all have the opportunity to fulfil our potential. Senegal has a very low rate of HIV infection, thanks to its awareness raising campaigns and practical resources.

The artists

WARU Studio, from Dakar. Short films dealing with the subject of HIV/AIDS, with prejudice in relation to HIV/AIDS patients, stigmatization, the acceptance of the illness and the creation of new values. Participating artists: Pi Niang, Fatou Kande Senghor, Aziz Cisse, Arfang Sarr, Jacky Ly and Pamphile Oudiane.

De Ondermening Collective, Belgium. A few days before the opening of the Dak’Art Biennale, De Ondermening will carry out their “Prudence” performances at the Plage des sportives and gradually make their way to the Island of Gorée. “Prudence” is a brand of condoms sold in Senegal. The group will explore the creative possibilities of condoms, invite the audience to participate, and film the entire process. Artists: Boris Van den Eynden, Pauline Niks, Bas Devos and Jesse Creemers.

Lionel Mwe di Malila will make a video clip: it will be a rap, with musicians. A young artist falls in love with a girl who has been infected by HIV-AIDS. The music transmits a message. The artist wrote the text and coordinated the shoot for the video clip. The video will be shown on a monitor on the ferry that goes to the Island of Gorée.

The artist Koen Vanmechelen will create the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, ArtAids Section. The chosen rooster, isolated and disoriented, evokes those who discover their HIV positive status: Why me? The installation talks about the virus, stigmatization and exclusion. It includes 7,000 eggs. As many vaccines are egg-based, the egg functions as the metaphor for a cure. On Sunday, people will be invited to taste the food prepared using the eggs. Children will participate in a workshop in which they paint the eggshells.

Exhibition: ”More to Love. Thinking about AIDS from Art”
Casa Asia-Madrid Center
From the 17th of April to the finals of July 2010
Opening: Friday, 16th of April, at 7.30pm.

This exhibition is the result of the collaboration of Casa Asia with the ArtAids Foundation to promote the reflection on AIDS from the area of visual arts. The works that have been brought together have been produced by the Dutch collector Han Nefkens, a resident of Barcelona. With the purpose to stimulate the intercultural dialogue, they have coexisted works proceeding from Thai artists and western artists

The exhibition includes works by artists like Amrit Chusuwan, Arin Rungjang, Erich Weiss, Gerald Van Der Kaap, Kamol Phaosavasdi, Leo Copers, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Noree Thammarak, Nuts Society/Practical Studio, Otto Berchem, Patiroop Chychookiat, Pratchaya Phinthong, Prateep Suthathongthai and Sutee Kunavichayanont .

Each artist presents their work thinking about AIDS with the goal of challenge the stigma of the disease and promote its eradication.

Casa Asia-Madrid Center
Miraflores Palace
Carrera de San Jerónimo, 15
Madrid

Free Admission

Curator: Stef Van Bellingen
Dates: May 8 – 9, 2010
Venues:
City of Dakar: (performances from May 5th on)
Ferry to the Island of Gorée
Island of Gorée: (opening festivities May 8th at 4.30 p.m.)

Tous ensemble is an exhibition by ArtAids for Dak’art Off, part of the Dakar Biennale. African and European artists will work together, inspired by the subject of AIDS – the North and South joining forces to tackle a subject that affects us all.

Tous ensemble will be held in Senegal, as part of the Dakar Biennale’s Off-program, on the volcanic Island of Gorée, with its painful past of slavery and liberation and the conciliatory idea that we all have the opportunity to fulfil our potential. Senegal has a very low rate of HIV infection, thanks to its awareness raising campaigns and practical resources.

The artists

WARU Studio , from Dakar. Short films dealing with the subject of HIV/AIDS, with prejudice in relation to HIV/AIDS patients, stigmatization, the acceptance of the illness and the creation of new values. Participating artists: Pi Niang, Fatou Kande Senghor, Aziz Cisse, Arfang Sarr, Jacky Ly and Pamphile Oudiane.

De Ondermening Collective , Belgium. A few days before the opening of the Dak’Art Biennale, De Ondermening will carry out their “Prudence” performances at the Plage des sportives and gradually make their way to the Island of Gorée. “Prudence” is a brand of condoms sold in Senegal. The group will explore the creative possibilities of condoms, invite the audience to participate, and film the entire process. Artists: Boris Van den Eynden, Pauline Niks, Bas Devos and Jesse Creemers.

Lionel Mwe di Malila will make a video clip: it will be a rap, with musicians. A young artist falls in love with a girl who has been infected by HIV-AIDS. The music transmits a message. The artist wrote the text and coordinated the shoot for the video clip. The video will be shown on a monitor on the ferry that goes to the Island of Gorée.

The artist Koen Vanmechelen will create the Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, ArtAids Section. The chosen rooster, isolated and disoriented, evokes those who discover their HIV positive status: Why me? The installation talks about the virus, stigmatization and exclusion. It includes 7,000 eggs. As many vaccines are egg-based, the egg functions as the metaphor for a cure. On Sunday, people will be invited to taste the food prepared using the eggs. Children will participate in a workshop in which they paint the eggshells.

On February 24, the Catalan Association of Art Critics (ACCA) conferred the 2009 ACCA Award for Best Initiative to the ArtAids Foundation for the multiple-venue project ‘Mirant des de fora/From the Outside Looking In.’ The exhibition, curated by Miquel Bardagil, reflects on the feelings experienced by people living with HIV, through disciplines like photography, drawing, painting, video and instalation.  ‘On the Outside Looking In’ was presented in December 2009 at nine venues in Barcelona, with the participation of the following artists: Francesc Abad, Ignasi Aballí, Iñaki Álvarez, Roger Bernat, Jordi Canudas, Biel Capllonch, Pep Dardanyà, Alícia Framis, Núria Güell, Jean-Charles Hue, Anna Marín, Josep-Maria Martín, Marina Núñez, Antonio Ortega, Santiago Ortiz, Javier Peñafiel, L. A. Raeven, Job Ramos and Erich Weiss. After its Barcelona season, ‘On the Outside Looking In’ will be presented in Oviedo (Banco Herrero Head Office) from September to November, 2010, and then at MuVIM in Valencia from December 16 to February 2011.

LA VANGUARDIA 25
15 March 2010

The writer and collector Han Nefkens recounts his experience living with HIV

“It awakened in me the desire to share”

The writer and art collector Han Nefkens (Rotterdam, 1854), has been fighting HIV for his own life since he found out he was HIV positive in 1987. He was 33 years old, with a stable relationship – with Felipe, his current partner – and he had been working in Mexico as a correspondent for Dutch public radio for eleven years. “You think the film of your life is just starting. And suddenly, you see the credits roll!” At that moment, he remembers, life expectancy for a person with HIV was eight months, a year and a half at most. “At first you don’t believe it. Positive? What does that mean? Maybe it’s something good. No? Then they must have made a mistake, for sure. But no. It was no error. Then you enter the medical circuit. You must take medication every day. You have to look after your health… But what really hurts is the loss of that childish illusion that you are going to live for ever…”

He needed time to absorb the news and find a place for it in his new life, to gather the strength with which to fight the shame and social stigma it entails. And when he was forced to stop and take a deep breath, AIDS gave him its first gift. “When you’re young you study, work or do a one particular thing because you will be able to do other things later. And suddenly that “later” doesn’t exist, it’s now or nothing. You learn to live each moment as if it were unique, without wasting a minute, every single one is important.” In 1991, the death of his brother, who was also ill with AIDS, plunged him back into a black hole, which he found his way out of thanks to writing. “I didn’t do it as a form of therapy. It is extremely difficult to write, it is much easier to forget. My life as a writer simply began on that day because I had never had such as powerful reason to write until then.”

His first book “Blood Brothers”, came out in 1995, and a year later the new combinations of drugs for AIDS treatment expanded his horizon. “I began to feel much better, my T4 improved, I no longer felt so tired, and the end – which had felt so near – began to retreat, to get further away.” We could say this was the start of Han Nefkens’ third life. “Suddenly there is hope, and the idea that maybe I can live to 70 came back to me. The problem is that my organism creates resistance to the drugs, so every year and a half or so I need new medication, which luckily keeps appearing. Thank God I have the financial means and a good doctor in Holland who helps me to access them, participating in programs and research. And that’s how I’ve ended up here, where I live now, with an appointment in my pocket with Doctor Bonaventura Clotet. For me, Barcelona has the meaning of life.”

And art reminds him that he is indeed alive. One day, on a tour of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, he was transfixed for five hours by the Bill Viola video “The Crossing”, in which a man is consumed by fire. A short time later, it was the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist in New York who captivated him with the sensuality of her colours and shapes. “I want a lot of people to see this,” he thought. How? By starting an art collection, the H+F Collection, which he doesn’t display on the walls of his home, but  in museums like the Central Museum in Utrecht, the Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam or the Sitchting de Pont in Tilburg. “It is not philanthropy. I am driven by the desire to share, so that the things that move me can also affect other people,” adds Nefkens. “For me, starting the collection in 2000 was liberating. Like any member of a well-off family in Holland, I used part of my incoming money to live, and I invested the rest. I realised that this was not what I wanted. I wanted to use it for something that moved me, that filled me with pleasure: art. The first decision, then, involved giving myself permission to use it.” He currently owns over 400 works. The story darkens once more in 2001, when HIV infected his brain and he lost the ability to read, write, talk, eat, walk… It took him two years to be able to connect things to their names again. He writes about it in “Borrowed Time. Messages from a Distant Land”, a moving, lucid account that has already been published in Holland (he is looking for a Spanish publisher!) After reading it, it seems miraculous to have him here talking animatedly, peppering the conversation with candid laughter. “I became a two year old child. And that was a terrible shock. I was very close to death, and like anybody who makes that journey, when I returned I was no longer the same person. My desire is to share, my thoughts, my experiences, my money… I am still alive thanks to the drugs, but there a millions of people who do not have access to them. It is unbearably unfair. I cannot keep living while I see how others die.”

This is why, in 2006, he reinvented himself as an “activist” and created the ArtAids Foundation, which uses art in the fight against AIDS, inviting artists to create pieces that deal with the illness. Its first exhibition in Barcelona, On the Outside Looking In, has merited an award from the Associació Catalana de Critics d’Art. It also runs another program in Thailand, where the foundation provides integral care for 200 children with AIDS and their families. “It’s as though we had adopted them,” he says. And he provides funds for research projects, among them the Can Ruti centre directed by Doctor Clotet. “It hasn’t been fashionable to talk about side effects for some time now, to talk about AIDS. Forty million people have it…, it’s so common… ,” he satirized in “Borrowed Time,” and here and now he warns of the importance of prevention, the fact that it is important to talk about it, and he can’t think of a better means of doing it than through art. “People have let their guard down. They think the drugs fix everything. But they don’t know about the side effects, nausea, tiredness…., and that they increase the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. But I’m not complaining. I celebrate life every single day.”

ON FINDING OUT

“You think the film of
your life is just starting,
and the credits roll!”

Han Nefkens, photographed at the ArtAids head office in Barcelona.

THE POSITIVE SIDE

“You learn to live every
moment as though it
were unique, without
wasting a single minute”

TERESA SESÉ
Barcelona

Pilot Light: Debates and exchanges on contemporary art, artist talks and decoding societal issues

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Artist talks with artists in residence:
Mehdi A. and Anna-Katharina Scheidegger
Lille, Maison Folie Moulins
16.02 at 18h30

The discovery of art work is always exciting. Come meet the artists Anna-Katharina Scheidegger –in residence at the Hôpital St Vincent de Paul in Lille- and Mehdi A – at the Maison Folie Moulins. A friendly and open exchange, this talk allows children and adult to speak to the artists.

Free entry

_
Screening and debate about the film Les témoins by André Téchiné
In partnership with Inserm
Lille, Cinéma associatif de quartier « L’Univers »
23.02 at 10h

After the screening of the film, Christian Dherbomez (Hôpital Dron, Tourcoing) will discuss AIDS issues with students.

Free entry

(Reservations: 03 28 65 84 20)

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Debate: « AIDS and prejudice »
In partnership with le Nouveau Planning Familial de Lille.
Tourcoing, Hospice d’Havré
23.02 at 14h30

This event is specifically targeting towards collégiens (4ème et 3ème).

Speakers:
Christian Dherbomez, cadre de santé à l’Hôpital Dron, Tourcoing
Véronique Séhier, Directrice du Nouveau Planning Familial
Pasquine Saule, Nouveau Planning Familial

Free entry (Reservations 03 28 65 84 20)

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Screening and debate around the film Les témoins by André Téchiné
In partnership with Inserm
Lille, Cinéma associatif de quartier « L’Univers »
23.02 at 20h

After the screening of the film, Yazdan Yazdanpanah (Chef du Service Universitaire Régional des Maladies Infectieuses et du Voyageur, Hôpital Dron de Tourcoing) will speak about AIDS issues with the audience.

Free entry (Reservations 03 28 65 84 20)

_
A lunch visit for teachers
Lille, Espace Le Carré
24.02 at 12h30
Bring your picnic and we will provide drinks and coffee!

Free entry (Reservations 03 28 65 84 20)

_
Table ronde : « Qu’est ce qu’être séropositif aujourd’hui ? »
In partnership with Inserm
Lille, Lycée Montebello
04.03 at 18h

Because prejudices still persist and the daily life of an HIV patient is still difficult, this discussion between the public and professionals will discuss AIDS from other points of view.

Speakers:

Professor Yazdan Yazdanpanah, Chef du Service Universitaire Régional des Maladies Infectieuses et du Voyageur, Hôpital Dron de Tourcoing
Sabine Pretre, social worker
Madame Serhani, psychologist (to be confirmed)
Han Nefkens, President of the ArtAids Foundation
Moderator : Paul Becquart, scientific journalist, Dr ès sciences de la vie et de la santé

Free entry

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Conference : « Caravage in New York, contemporary art in the AIDS era»
Tourcoing, Ecole Régionale d’Expression Plastique (ERSEP)
05.03 at 10h30

Speaker : Philippe Baryga, doctoral student l’Université de Valenciennes

Free entry

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Video night
Tourcoing, Fresnoy, Studio National des Art Contemporains
22.03 at 19h

As part of the exhibition Bill Viola / Thierry Kuntzel : Deux éternités proches, présentée au Fresnoy du 27.02 au 25.04.2010.
A selection of videos by French and interational artists about AIDS, tolerance, and behavior towards others.

Artists presented :
Valérie Mréjen
Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Free entry

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Presentation : « Media and AIDS: Looking at our society »
In partnership with the association AIDES
Dunkerque, Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts (ERBA)
23.03.2010 at 18h
How can we speak about a subject that is still taboo in our society? A specialist will decode the way in which AIDS is handled in the media, from television commercials to poster campaigns by the association AIDES.

Free entry

Mehdi A.
Transfert, 2009
Production of the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque

The work of Mehdi A. is centered around meetings and connections. His performances reflect daily life, revealing small details previously unseen, and perhaps adding a bit of magic to it. The installation Transfert is being built gradually, following the path of the public, the residents, the people in transit across the neighborhoods of Lille. The links between these people are plaster casts placed on different parts of their body, chosen by the artist. Show romanizationThis creative process is essential to the work, because each participant supplements it with his or her individual trace. The artist then places the casts on a banquet table, creating a decomposed and protean body, as well as delivering a portrait of the city and life around us. During the exhibition, each visitor is invited to take chalk and write on the green walls of the installation, or equally to erase others messages, leaving their own traces such as those of the cast.

Rirkrit Tiravanija
Untitled 2007 (mussels corner) (live), 2007
Performed by Pattara Chanruechachai
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work is centered around moments of exchange. In his food performances, the artist cooks for the viewers, and everyone in attendance enjoys a free meal, allowing for a shared experience and opportunity for dialogue. For Pilot Light, an exhibition with French and Thai artists, we wanted to do a food performance in order to better connect the community of northern France with Thai culture. With two such different cultures- generally, as well as in their level of public concern towards HIV/AIDS- it’s important to strengthen engagement with the public, especially the youth culture. An artist such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, who is a familiar and influential figure to both audiences, can make a difference in how the French public can connect to the work and to Thai culture, making it less exotic and more accessible. A food performance is a simple way of reaching out, an artwork which anyone can understand, regardless of their language. In this specific performance, mussels- a typical dish of Northern France- were cooked with Thai spices and Northern French beer, combining the two cultures in one meal.

Photos & video: Vincent Maquaire. ©www.maquaire.eu

In cooperation with the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais and the ArtAids Foundation, Espace le Carré, Maison Folie Moulins, Lycée Européen Montebello, Cinéma associatif de quartier l’Univers, Hôpital Saint Vincent de Paul (Lille) and Hôpital Gustave Dron (Tourcoing) will offer an international approach which is closely linked to the onset of AIDS in the 80s, as well as creations by contemporary Thai artists. This presentation will be enriched by productions by two artists Mehdi A. (France) and Anna Katharina Scheidegger (Switzerland) in residence at the Maison Folie de Moulins and Hôpital Saint Vincent de Paul.

Pilot Light
February 4-March 21, 2010

Opening
Thursday February 4, 2010
Espace Le Carré, Lille > 6:30 pm
Maison Folie de Moulins, Lille > 8pm
With a performance by Rirkrit Tiravanija

Artists
General Idea
Nan Goldin
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Gran Fury
Peter Hujar
Derek Jarman,
Michel Journiac,
Robert Mapplethorpe
David Wojnarowicz (with James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook)

Mehdi A.
Anna Katharina Scheidegger

Kamol Phaosavasdi
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
Sutee Kunavichayanont
Patiroop Chychookiat

Edition Access for All (Leandro Erlich, General Idea, Jef Geys, Shirin
Neshat, Kamol Phaosovasdi, Shirana Shahbazi, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Rirkrit
Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Sue Williams)

Illustrated top :

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1991, C-print jigsaw puzzle in plastic bag, 19,5 x 24,5 cm. Coll. De Pont, Tilburg (long term loan H+F Collection) © The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. Photo Peter Cox

Pilot Light
February 4-March 21, 2010

Opening
Thursday February 4, 2010
Espace Le Carré, Lille > 6:30 pm
Maison Folie de Moulins, Lille > 8pm
With a performance by Rirkrit Tiravanija

After Thailand in 2008, and then Spain in 2009, the ARTAIDS Foundation worked in close collaboration with the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais to present the event Pilot Light in February 2010 in France, and more specifically, in the Lille metropolitan area. Multiple social and cultural partners will be associated with this project around the theme of AIDS, activism and tolerance, representing different cultures and eras.
Espace le Carré, Maison Folie Moulins, Lycée Européen Montebello, Cinéma associatif de quartier l’Univers, Hôpital Saint Vincent de Paul (Lille) and Hôpital Gustave Dron (Tourcoing) will offer an international approach which is closely linked to the onset of AIDS in the 80s, as well as creations by contemporary Thai artists.This presentation will be enriched by productions by two artists Mehdi A. (France) and Anna Katharina Scheidegger (Switzerland) in residence at the Maison Folie de Moulins and Hospital Saint Vincent de Paul.
A number of public programs will allow for exchange and dialogue through screenings, discussions and conferences, in the presence of the professionals from the medical, cultural and community sectors.

The exhibition Pilot Light hopes to offer the public a rich experience, at once informative and artistic, and to inspire reflection on the issue of AIDS as a current problem in today’s global society.

*The title Pilot Light refers to the small gas flame that is constantly kept alight in order to act as a source for a more powerful gas burner. A pilot light thus becomes a metaphor for an eternal, origin source; you cannot get a fire going without it.

This event is supported by Caisse d’Epargne Nord France Europe.

Curator: Lumi Tan

For more information please contact:
FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais
930 avenue de Rosendaël – 59240 Dunkerque
T : 03 28 65 84 20 – info@fracnpdc.fr – www.fracnpdc.fr
Press contact : Chantal Athané-Poizot (c-athane@fracnpdc.fr)

Artists
General Idea
Nan Goldin
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Gran Fury
Peter Hujar
Derek Jarman,
Michel Journiac,
Robert Mapplethorpe
David Wojnarowicz (with James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook)

Mehdi A.
Anna Katharina Scheidegger

Kamol Phaosavasdi
Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook
Sutee Kunavichayanont
Patiroop Chychookiat

Edition Access for All (Leandro Erlich, General Idea, Jef Geys, Shirin
Neshat, Kamol Phaosovasdi, Shirana Shahbazi, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Rirkrit
Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Sue Williams)

Exhibitions:

Espace le Carré, Lille
4 February  > 21 March 2010
Artists : General Idea, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gran Fury, Peter Hujar, Derek Jarman, Michel Journiac, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz (with James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook)
Address : Angle rue des Archives/rue de la Halle – 59 000 Lille
tél : 03 28 04 83 92

Maison Folie de moulins, Lille
4 February > 14 March 2010
Artists: Kamol Phaosavasdi, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Sutee
Kunavichayanont, Mehdi A., Anna Katharina Scheidegger
Address : 47/49 rue d’Arras – 59 000 Lille
tél : 03 20 95 08 82 – email : accueilmfm@mairie-lille.fr

Lycée européen montebello, Lille
23 February > 21 March 2010
Artists: Patiroop Chychookiat, General idea
Address : 196 Boulevard Montebello – 59 000 Lille
tél : 03 20 63 33 33

Cinéma associatif de quartier l’Univers, Lille
4 February > 26 February 2010
Artists: Access for All edition: Leandro Erlich, General idea, Jef Geys, Shirin Neshat, Kamol Phaosovasdi, Shirana Shahbazi, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Sue Williams
Address : 16 rue Georges Danton – 59 000 Lille Moulins
tél : 03 20 52 73 48 – email : info@lunivers.org

Hôpital saint Vincent de Paul (Groupe Hospitalier de
l’institut Catholique de Lille), Lille
4 February > 4 March 2010
Artist:  Anna Katharina Scheidegger
Address : Boulevard Belfort, BP 387 – 59 020 Lille Cedex
tél : 03 20 87 48 48

Centre Hospitalier Gustave Dron, Tourcoing
Service des maladies infectieuses et du Voyageur
4 February > 21 March 2010
Artists : Access for All edition: Leandro Erlich, General Idea, Jef Geys, Shirin Neshat, Kamol Phaosovasdi, Shirana Shahbazi, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Sue Williams
Address : 155, rue du Président Coty, BP 619 – 59 208 Tourcoing Cedex
tél : 03 20 69 49 49

Illustrated top :

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled, 1991, C-print jigsaw puzzle in plastic bag, 19,5 x 24,5 cm. Coll. De Pont, Tilburg (long term loan H+F Collection) © The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. Photo Peter Cox