Welcome & Territory Acknowledgement
Our opening session is not only an overview of the project, but an invitation to reflect on where we are, how we arrived, and what is to come. Sempúlyan Stewart Gonzales, Two-Spirit Elder from the Squamish Nation, will provide a welcome to the territory to open our day. As an integral community member and contributor to the HIV In My Day project, Elder Sandy Lambert will then provide opening words on HIV and AIDS in British Columbia, followed by a welcome and overview of the activities by Jackie Haywood.
Exhibition of Art & Ephemera
The gallery exhibition showcases art and ephemera from the early years of HIV in British Columbia. Co-curated by Jackie Haywood and Robert Ablenas, with support from photogapher Sharon Tenenbaum, the exhibition provides a window to the past through art, politics, and activism. The exhibition runs from November 29th-December 27th.
Flame Storytelling
In October 2022, seven people living with and affected by HIV participated in a two-day storytelling workshop with Deborah Williams, where they shared their personal lived experiences. Join this incredible opportunity to hear their works: stories about their lives and experiences with HIV. Continuing the important work of witnessing testimony and recording our diverse pasts, the Flame Storytelling presentation is an opportunity to remember, to listen, and to witness stories of people living in BC.
Plague of The Gorgeous
In 1993, in the heart of the AIDS crisis, a small group of gay men decided that Vancouver should have a professional queer theatre company. And so Out West Performance Society was created. One of their major projects was Plague of the Gorgeous and Other Tales, a collection of five short HIV-themed scripts that were to be performed together. In this session, actors will be reading selected excerpts of Plague of the Gorgeous, followed by a panel discussion with the performers and authors of two of the scripts, Colin Thomas and Lisa Lowe. The discussion will be facilitated by JP Catungal.
Living Library
Pull up a chair and come chat with artists and community members who participated in the Poz Women Show Off showcase.This community-based project adds women’s stories of living with HIV to existing and archived data from the HIV In My Day project. Co-led by HIV activist/artist, Peggy Frank, and arts-based researcher, Dr. Leah Tidey, eight women living with HIV came together for a full-day arts-based workshop exploring movement, painting, collage, storytelling, stained glass creation, and poetry. They continue to meet to create poetry, art, and creative collaborations. Come join in the conversation, ask them about their art, experiences, and have them share their stories.
Interactive Timeline of Stigma and Understanding around HIV
YOU are invited to add to his 28 foot timeline located in the hallway leading into the theatre. Mark events and memories of the early years using Post-it notes (across from the banner). Artist Peggy Frank used several sources for information to create this living art and writes of her work, “My view of the world of HIV (from 1980 to 2022) is through an HIV-positive woman’s lens. As an activist, I am drawn to showing the mixed messages of undetectable viral loads and criminalization.”
In My Day
In My Day is a verbatim work of contemporary drama that exists at the cross section of disability and memorial arts. Centred around HIV’s impact on Vancouver, it is a story of a pandemic response with extraordinary victories and heartbreaking failures.
This work is inspired by a community-based oral history research project in 2017, HIV In My Day, which was initiated at the University of Victoria interviewing long-term survivors and caregivers who lived through the first 15 years of the HIV pandemic in British Columbia. The collected stories and reflections would honour the voices of women, people of colour, Indigenous folks, trans, people who use[d] injection drugs, and others, alongside those of cis-gender gay men.
**Please note: This event is currently SOLD OUT. You can join our waitlist here.
