Chicago, IL (November 20, 2006)--Columbia College Chicago will present Pandemic in Print: African HIV/AIDS Posters, an exhibition featuring more than fifty posters, all on loan from the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University.
The exhibition opens January 11 and closes February 17, 2007 at the college's A+D Gallery, 619 South Wabash Avenue. An opening reception will be held on January 25 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. and a closing reception will be held on February 14 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. The gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. For more information call 312-344-8687 or visit www.colum.edu/adgallery.
HIV and AIDS have had a greater impact on the continent of Africa than anywhere else on earth. Although only ten per cent of the world's population live in sub-Saharan Africa, over seventy percent of the people living with HIV/AIDS are Africans. More than fourteen million African children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, about the same number as the entire population of the state of Illinois. The posters in this exhibition were sponsored by a wide range of organizations, including local, national and international entities, NGOs, schools and colleges, Christian and Muslim groups, and activist organizations. They provide a unique opportunity to examine how the disease is presented to the African public and to understand the issues that underlie its rapid and destructive spread across the continent.
The posters in Pandemic in Printaddress a wide variety of themes, including HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention, care and access to treatment, the rights of persons with AIDS, and the stigma that often comes with the disease. Several of the posters promote the ABC campaign (for Abstain, Be faithful to one partner, and, if that is not possible, use a Condom every time) that was successful in reducing the HIV infection rate in Uganda, once one of the countries hardest hit by the AIDS crisis, and elsewhere in Africa. Other posters visualize the conflict between those who support the use of condoms as a means of preventing AIDS and those who prefer to teach abstinence only. These posters demonstrate how ideas that originate outside of Africa in debates among religious groups, foreign governments, and international aid organizations, have a direct impact on African people and the AIDS crisis there.
The exhibition includes several posters sponsored by Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) of South Africa, an organization that campaigns for treatment for people and HIV and for ways to reduce new HIV infections. TAC's confrontational posters specifically target South African government leaders and policies that have limited access to treatment for broad sections of the population. They address subjects such as access to anti-retroviral drugs and drugs for pregnant women that prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, two issues for which TAC 's efforts were successful. The TAC posters in the exhibition feature bold graphics and simple, direct messages, reminiscent of the posters sponsored by ACT/UP and other AIDS activist organizations in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s.
In conjunction with Pandemic in Print: African HIV/AIDS Posters, Columbia College will present several public programs. On January 25 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Dr. Mardge Cohen will discuss her experience as the founder of WE-ACTx, an organization that provides care, treatment, and advocacy for HIV infected women and children in Rwanda. Dr. Cohen is a senior physician at John H. Stroger Hospital (Cook County Hospital) in Chicago and Director of Women's HIV Research there. On Febraury 14 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Chaz Maviyane-Davies, a graphic designer from Zimbabwe, will discuss his work, which has focused primarily on issues of human rights, social justice, health, and the environment.
The exhibition was organized by a class of seventeen undergraduate students at Columbia. The class was taught by Dr. Kate Ezra, Coordinator of Art History in the Department of Art + Design.
In an ongoing series of yearlong college-wide examinations of important social issues, HIV&AIDS has been chosen for the 2006/07 academic year in a program entitled, Critical Encounters. Critical Encounters enables faculty, students, staff and the community to voluntarily collaborate toward a more complex understanding of the role and responsibility of the arts and media in shaping public attitudes, opinions and knowledge.
The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, which has lent all of the posters to Pandemic in Print: African HIV/AIDS Posters, is the largest separate collection of Africana materials in the world. Its collections include close to 300,00 books and periodicals dealing with all aspects of Africa.
This program is partially sponsored from a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Media Relations contact: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, 312.344.8695
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 6, 2006
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and the Music Department at Columbia College Chicago are proud to present In Time of War, a concert of two bold musical responses to the Vietnam Conflict by Luigi Nono and George Crumb paired with An-My Lê's daring photography exhibition Small Wars at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Unnervingly relevant in 2006, these two works speak loudly in today's political climate.
In the 1960's Italian composer Luigi Nono turned to theater and electronics to allow him to express his political sentiments outside of the constraints and connotations of the concert hall. A floresta é jovem cheja de vida (1966) is Nono's bold anti-war statement which packages his experience with voice, instruments and electronic playback into a self-contained dramatic work. It is scored for a soprano soloist, three speakers, a single clarinet, six percussionists playing bronze metal sheets, and a pre-recorded multi-channel tape playback. ICE is proud to present this work's Chicago Premiere, in collaboration with world-renowned soprano Tony Arnold.
George Crumb's Black Angels (1970) remains one of the seminal American compositions from the Vietnam era. At once chilling and sublimely beautiful, Black Angels is among the most powerful musical contributions of the last century.
WHEN: Wednesday, December 13, 2006
TIME: 7:30 pm
WHERE: Museum of Contemporary Photography
600 S. Michigan Avenue, 1st floor
COST: Free Admission, reservations recommended: 312/494.2655
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INFO: Isabel Castellvi at 312/494/2655 or Isabel@iceorg.org
Media Relations Contact: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, 312.344.8695