The UCLA AIDS Institute, the Art |Global Health Center at UCLA and actor Richard Gere together marked the start of the International AIDS Conference in Toronto Aug. 12 by presenting the Keiskamma Altarpiece, a monumental, multi-panel artwork created by 130 women from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province - one of the parts of the world hardest hit by AIDS - to celebrate the lives and memory of all those from their community who have died of the disease.

The event at Toronto's Cathedral Church of St. James also included two leaders of the group that created the altarpiece: Dr. Carol Hofmeyr, director of the Keiskamma Trust and the Eastern Cape's only physician providing HIV/AIDS care, and Eunice Nombulelo Mangwane, Hofmeyr's community AIDS counselor, who is featured photographically in the altarpiece's center panel.

"It represents a turning point in our community's relationship with HIV and AIDS," Hofmeyr said. "Miraculously, this work of art - which has no single creator - embodies not just our fears and our losses but the slow restoration of hope in our community. Every time I see the altarpiece I am astounded anew by the forces within a community that can be summoned to make something so apt and so beautiful."

It is Hofmeyr's belief that the enormous optimism contained in this powerful, unique and spectacular work of art can serve as an inspiration to all who view it.

Richard Gere, a committed AIDS activist who is founder and president of Healing the Divide, a nonprofit that seeks solutions to a number of global problems, said that the altarpiece exemplifies what the arts can do to intervene in the AIDS epidemic.

"Just one look at this visionary piece, which was handcrafted by more than a hundred people, and you can feel what an entire community of South Africans is going through, how every last person is emotionally and personally affected by HIV," Gere said. "My hope is that those who see the altar will choose to respond by giving what they can and by working to make the new antiretroviral treatments available to every infected person around the globe."
Based on a famed 15th-century altarpiece created by Matthias Grunewald, the colossal Keiskamma Altarpiece uses embroidery, beadwork, wire sculpture and photographs to offer a message of hope to the people of the rural and impoverished Eastern Cape Province. Measuring 13 feet by 22 feet, the vibrant and colorful altarpiece is composed of a series of hinged panels that use the imagery of the Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape to depict life in the region before - and after - AIDS engulfed South Africa. Fully opened, the altarpiece reveals dramatic life-size photographs of three local grandmothers and their grandchildren, some orphaned by AIDS.

This is the first leg in a journey that will take the altarpiece to St. James Episcopal Cathedral in Chicago, where it will be on display Aug. 20-Sept. 20; to churches in Los Angeles and Pasadena from Oct. 1 through Dec. 15; and to UCLA's Glorya Kaufman Hall from Jan. 2 through March 15, 2007.

The year-long North American tour is sponsored by the UCLA AIDS Institute (http://www.uclaaidsinstitute.org), the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History (http://www.fowler.ucla.edu), the Art | Global Health Center at UCLA (part of the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures, http://www.wac.ucla.edu) and Artists for a New South Africa (http://www.ansafrica.org). The Toronto tour stop is spearheaded by the UCLA AIDS Institute and the Art | Global Health Center.

Established in 1992, the UCLA AIDS Institute is a multidisciplinary think tank drawing on the skills of top-flight researchers in the worldwide fight against HIV and AIDS, the first cases of which were reported in 1981 by UCLA physicians. Institute members, led by Dr. Irvin Chen, include researchers in virology and immunology, genetics, cancer, neurology, ophthalmology, epidemiology, social science, public health, nursing, and disease prevention. Their findings have led to advances in treating HIV as well as other diseases, such as hepatitis B and C, influenza, and cancer.

The Art | Global Health Center at UCLA serves as the umbrella for the international Make Art/Stop AIDS project, a network of artists working with experts in public health and medicine to intervene in the AIDS epidemic. The exhibition of the Keiskamma Altarpiece marks the inauguration of this new center, which is directed by David Gere, associate professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures.

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