Who's Positive.....

 Bob Marley chillin over photographers at the exhibition of Who's Positive? at The High Spirits, Pune. 

JUGAAD....

....Who’s Positive? is a project initiated by Wake Up Pune and funded by Ruby Hall Clinic, in collaboration with Sahara Aalhad and artist Shraddha Borawake. The participants of the workshop were a mixture of people living with HIV/AIDS as well as their care-workers and other volunteers.

Poster design by Waylon D'Mello

On the first of the 2 daylong sessions, the participants were asked to photograph their fears. These images were put into outlines of 2 bodies.

Like, fear of snakes...

Or the image of finding your dead brothers body in a train accident many years ago imprinted in your mind!!!

On day 2 the same was done with images of hope. There were many volunteers who helped all the participants realise an image of a phrase in their mind. 

"Id like to hold my future in my own hands, where I have adopted my own children, work hard and have a family." 

"Be free and happy all the time!" 

As a result 2 pieces were formulated depicting the difference between a body full of fear and one full of hope.

Wake Up Pune is an NGO dedicated to spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS.  

Pictoral body maps are a way through which one is able to depict their latent emotions. Oftentimes emotions that lurk beneath the surface prevent people from confronting their fears and aspirations. This exercise offered them a roadmap to express the tension they either consciously or sub-consciously hold on to.

Sahara Aalhad is a centre for rehabilitation and HIV/AIDS care.

HIV and other life long sexually transmitted disease victims are extremely painful to observe. To be around an idea and concept that it is just one moment, that can turn your life around, it is just one infected needle that can put you in a life full of terminal challenges, it is just one bad decision or lonely night that can make you a victim or perpetrator of contracting or passing on an infection. Being around that kind of impending doom, is only for strong people. And I was eternally impressed by those folk- the care-workers, who work with the infected lot, shunned by society, malnourished, abandoned and ailing individuals, who have a life long path of struggle for their health, physical as well as mental. Therefore, this workshop attempted to divide the two. A positive and negative mind, and the difference between a body full of fear and a body full of hope. 

Love yourself, and dont let you body take the brunt EVER of any deep and dark mental wanderings, because, all you have is this body. Once ruined, you cannot turn back time.