Innocence In Kaleeba's We Miss You All
Introduction
The overarching HIV/AIDS narrative often views children as “innocent victims” due to the aftermath of their parent’s death from the disease (Foster 44). This view forgets those children who find themselves harboring HIV and subsequently lose their lives to the illness. Does this suggest that living with HIV costs these children all forms of innocence? To contradict this assertion, Bollinger generates a work that seeks to remember these children and challenge such conventions in regards to innocence. His combination of text and art produces a feeling of future hope beyond current despair.
The Words Bollinger selects a page from Kaleeba’s We Miss You All, a book that explores the effects of HIV in the family setting, as his canvas. …show more content…
As opposed to allowing the art to dictate the story, he wanted the art to emphasize the repurposed text, which follows Phillips’ method, “the quest for the text is always the first thing…I am an artist so the visual aesthetic follows the verbal one, and I can more or less be sure to be able to provide it” (King 4-5). Accordingly, Bollinger wanted to paint a picture that would cause the viewer to gain a sense of the innocence inherent in all children, even in the presence of HIV. Therefore, Bollinger’s art appears as an indistinguishable silhouette with strikingly blue eyes framed by colorful splotches and lines (Bollinger). This indistinguishable face with blue eyes establishes the innocence present regardless of all contextual factors. In this way, the viewer does not know whether the art incorporates the speaker, listener, the lost child from the text, or an entirely different person altogether. However, the silhouette alone fails to incorporate the essence of a child, and Bollinger pushes the feeling of a child through the piece by including the colorful blotches and lines in a manner consistent with a child’s finger painting techniques. Lastly, Bollinger acknowledges the presence of HIV with the use of red in his piece. The color red represents HIV/AIDS, but a deeper meaning exists as much of the red appears on the dark silhouette itself, constituting the bloodstream and the
The overarching HIV/AIDS narrative often views children as “innocent victims” due to the aftermath of their parent’s death from the disease (Foster 44). This view forgets those children who find themselves harboring HIV and subsequently lose their lives to the illness. Does this suggest that living with HIV costs these children all forms of innocence? To contradict this assertion, Bollinger generates a work that seeks to remember these children and challenge such conventions in regards to innocence. His combination of text and art produces a feeling of future hope beyond current despair.
The Words Bollinger selects a page from Kaleeba’s We Miss You All, a book that explores the effects of HIV in the family setting, as his canvas. …show more content…
As opposed to allowing the art to dictate the story, he wanted the art to emphasize the repurposed text, which follows Phillips’ method, “the quest for the text is always the first thing…I am an artist so the visual aesthetic follows the verbal one, and I can more or less be sure to be able to provide it” (King 4-5). Accordingly, Bollinger wanted to paint a picture that would cause the viewer to gain a sense of the innocence inherent in all children, even in the presence of HIV. Therefore, Bollinger’s art appears as an indistinguishable silhouette with strikingly blue eyes framed by colorful splotches and lines (Bollinger). This indistinguishable face with blue eyes establishes the innocence present regardless of all contextual factors. In this way, the viewer does not know whether the art incorporates the speaker, listener, the lost child from the text, or an entirely different person altogether. However, the silhouette alone fails to incorporate the essence of a child, and Bollinger pushes the feeling of a child through the piece by including the colorful blotches and lines in a manner consistent with a child’s finger painting techniques. Lastly, Bollinger acknowledges the presence of HIV with the use of red in his piece. The color red represents HIV/AIDS, but a deeper meaning exists as much of the red appears on the dark silhouette itself, constituting the bloodstream and the