HIV

In this podcast, we talk with Peruvian Wynnie Mynerva about painting and the body—about flesh, skin, and weight. We look back at her formative memories in Villa El Salvador, living on the fringes: we invoke friends, affects and support networks, and revisit her first home-studio and the parks where she used to sell copies of the great Western masters. We also discuss the role of medicine and body modifications in her work, and the outrage in response to bodies that are transformed in the name of self-determination, rather than to conform to conventional beauty standards.

Carlos Motta sees his research as a potential space of enunciation from which to act as a counterweight to the prevailing narratives—a positive gesture of recognition of social groups, identities and communities whose voices have been suppressed by the dominant colonial power. His radical multidisciplinary practice and his use of a range of media—from video to installation, sculpture, performance and drawing on paper—make him hard to pin down. He also focuses on interaction with others, in ensemble works involving orality, documentary, curating, and even organizing public programs and symposia. In this podcast, we talk to Carlos Motta about art, politics, the market, and working conditions.

Yaneth Valencia is a leader, activist mother and poet. She is also community organizer of Lila Mujer, a political space for support, collective creation  and affirmation of the lives of black women with HIV, which was founded in 2003 in the working class neighbourhoods of Cali, Colombia. In this podcast, we talk with Yaneth Valencia about the overlapping vulnerabilities that affect black women with HIV in Colombia, linking racism to the lack of a public health system and analysing the relationship between the virus and patriarchal violence, which is exacerbated by war and the forced displacement of black and indigenous peoples from their lands.