Body Maps: Women Navigating the Positive Experience in Africa and Canada

In our first project to address HIV beyond our own borders , the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE) has partnered with the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI) in southern Africa. We are helping women living with HIV/AIDS in Canada and Africa to tell their stories while offering life-saving information about HIV/AIDS and its treatment.

Women with HIV who are leaders in the AIDS movement in their communities in Tanzania, Zambia, and Canada are coming together in workshops organized by CATIE and REPSSI to create startling and beautiful body maps. Participants are led by a trained artist through a series of imaginative exercises to trace around their bodies on huge pieces of stiff paper and add their faces, images of their internal organs, and external scars. Then they add words, symbols, and pictures relating to their health, their history, their points of personal power, and their life goals. In this way, each woman records and shares her unique story of living with HIV. The result is a series of compelling, larger-than-life-sized paintings illustrating the impact of HIV on each woman’s body and soul.

Visit the body map gallery

The five days of the body mapping process creates a safe space where each woman can speak openly about her journey with HIV. Women are also offered support from those who best understand their situation: other women living with HIV. CATIE’s contribution is to weave HIV information into this artistic process by offering opportunities for the women to discuss their health in the context of the stories told in their body maps, and to learn about HIV and its treatment.

Small, personal health journals called tracing books are also created by each woman as part of this process. The tracing books contain pages with small outlines of the woman’s body upon which she can draw, mark, or record changes in her health over time. The tracing books can be used by each woman in visits to her doctor, facilitating discussions about her health, side effects, and symptoms.