Today I received a printed copy of the "Bakanika" Magazine which featured two of my illustrations.
For the main illustration I was asked for a full page abstraction of "HIV".
As I´m not familiar with any cases of HIV, I decided not to approach the subject on any personal or visceral level, so not to appeal to the sensationalistic aspect of the subject, but on a social and media level and ask myself what´s the common perception of the virus by people who´s not thoroughly informed, as I was at the moment of beginning the illustration.
Printed version with text.
As I talked to many people, I found out that the first death that an H.I.V patient experiments it´s a social death. Maybe it´s religion, maybe it´s because of people myths and media misconceptions, but the feeling of rejection is sometime worse than the ailment itself. That nowadays can be treated to some great results.
For the abstraction I used the image of Kali, the hindi goddess that often conveys death and destruction. She wears a necklace of skulls and a skirt of hands. Elements I found very useful to speak of death and social isolation.
The other illustration was a much more simple one. It was a vignette on how anyone can have H.I.V and don´t even know it.
Click to see full size
So, I tried to do this very honestly and careful, so I hope no one gets offended.
This is the version of the main illustration without text
Click to see full size.
