Celebrating the artistic community body, not just the singular artist....
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The artwork featured on this site reveals the private and personal endeavors of individual artists. The pieces are self excavations of one's own journey, emotional state, daily musings, or random whims. However, the organization of art on this site does not privilege the creative production of a singular artist. No specific person is highlighted or set apart for their artistic endeavors. Instead, each artwork joins an aggregate of community art. Every family member of Higher Ground has their own artistic style and their own unique approach to art making--that is something we celebrate and cherish during our group therapies--but this archive places emphasis on how the art pieces gather together to construct a narrative of our community and an aesthetic representation of our bond.
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We aim to ensure the confidentiality of individual family members, so focusing on the cultural production of the community, rather than just individuals, helps with this endeavor. Mostly, the art, collectively, relays Higher Ground's communal journey of offering refuge from the HIV/AIDS crisis.
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Art Made By Us All...
In April 2018, a special art therapy exercise led us all to reflect on the concept of collaboration and how we can ALL join together to make beauty. In the group, we sat at a table and started off by drawing a person/animal/living creature. With chalk, pencils, pens, markers, crayons, or other medium, we placed a life on our paper. After three minutes, we passed the paper to our left. Everyone would then add something new to the page newly passed to them. The facilitator told the members to draw what the person/animal/living entity on the paper dreams about. Three minutes would pass and members would pass the paper to their left again. The leader told them to draw something that the person/animal/living entity needs (such as food, water, shelter, etc.). Three minutes would pass again while members drew and everyone would pass their papers and wait for the newest directions. We passed our pages 12 times (the number of people in the art group) until we ended up with the paper we started with.
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At the end, each person was left with a piece of artwork that was, in part, created by every single person in the room. The beautiful pieces, pictured below, are not the products of one artist, but of several artists collaborating. This notion speaks to a central facet of Higher Ground: we help each other produce beauty as we make a space of refuge against HIV/AIDS stigmatization.
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