Dr Sophie Harman was one of the exhibitors at our recent ESRC-funded Art, Expression and Democracy workshop, one of our Exploring Civil Society Strategies for Democratic Renewal seminar series. She shares the background to her exhibit and the motivations behind her artwork.
‘Pili and the Left Ones? Sounds like an excellent girl group’ said a friend when I suggested they may want to stop by the exhibition at Bank Street Arts as part of the ESRC Seminar on Art, Expression and Democracy. Art is what people make of it but hopefully the images exhibited from the film PILI I am producing say less about 1960s girl bands and more about the complexity and everyday risk of HIV/AIDS. PILI is a feature length drama based on the stories of women living with HIV/AIDS in the Pwani region of Tanzania. The film features real people rather than trained actors and shot entirely on location in the region.
Pili is a woman in her early 20s with two children living in Pwani. She is HIV positive but in denial about her status, and works in the fields but longs to get out and start her own business. We follow her over four days as she has the opportunity to change her life but has to overcome several obstacles and structural limitations to do so. We therefore explore the agency of Pili as she navigates the structural boundaries of gender, poverty and disease. Pili is a fictional character but her life and story is based on the lives of 85 women living consulted in the making of the story and film. In this sense, even though Pili is played by the phenomenal Bello Rashidi (who had never acted before this film), as one woman in the cast suggested ‘Pili is everywhere.’
The Left Ones refer to HIV positive women who are single parents and have a responsibility to provide and care for their households. This was a phrase used by several people when conducting research for the film that resonated deeply with both the cast and crew: here were the women left behind by their partners, the government, society, and the international. They are conspicuously invisible: being both everywhere (‘Pili is everywhere’) and unseen in global and national policies and practices. The intent of the film is therefore to make these women visible by telling their stories to wider Tanzanian and international audiences.
The pictures exhibited as part of the ‘Art Expression and Democracy’ project reflect this intent. They show the isolation of the left ones, the intimacy of health, the expansiveness and precarity of informal employment, and the solidarity, care, and envy underpinning relationships between these women. They show how disease is not just located to health centres or clinics but how it impacts on the lives of real people who have to overcome many everyday risks to manage their own health.
The pictures encourage the viewer to reflect on who is able to express themselves through art, and the visibility of women who are conspicuously invisible in democratic processes and the everyday in Tanzania.
Read Dr Holly Ryan’s blog on the Art, Expression and Democracy exhibition and workshop.
For further information on PILI please visit my blog about the process of making the film www.notanotheraidsfilm.com. Director of Photography for the film is Craig Dean Devine, Director is Leanne Welham. Cast members featured in the pictures: Bello Rashidi (‘Pili’), Sekejua Rashidi (‘Zuhura’), Sesilia Kilimalia (‘Cecilia’), Mwanaidi Omari Sefi (‘Leila’), Catherine Mgimwa (‘Dr Mbwewe’), and Aisha Mussa (Vikoba extra), Mariam Hosseni (Vikoba extra), Fatuma Hussein Kingwaba (Vikoba extra), Aziza Masoud (Vikoba extra). The film is financed by an AXA Insurance Outlook Award.
Biography
Dr Sophie Harman is a Reader in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University, London. graduating from the University of Manchester she has held posts in the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick, and the Department of International Politics, City University. She joined QMUL in September 2012 and has since developed teaching provision in Global Health Politics and Africa and International Politics.
Sophie’s work focuses on the international institutions and funding streams that go towards global health initiatives, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and HIV/AIDS. Her work straddles research on international development, global governance and international political economy.
She is an active member of the Global Health Politics research community through her roles as co-convenor of the BISA Global Health working group, ISA Global Health Section Executive Membership, and advisory work to international agencies such as WHO, the European Parliament and UNAIDS. She is also Visiting Professor, HEARD, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Note: this article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Crick Centre, or the Understanding Politics blog series. To write for the Understanding Politics blog email us at [email protected]