To Whom It May Concern offers an opportunity to seropositive individuals in Athens to express themselves and embrace their identity. By their sharing of their experiences with other seropositive individuals (as workshop participants or exhibition visitors) and the opening up of dialogue with their communities (including families, partners, HIV Health professionals), participants claim the public space. This project offers a public discourse that encourages connection free of fear, stigma and prejudice. It is a platform to raise visibility for CFL and PV and help them reach out to society. To Whom It May Concern helps educate society at large about a public health issue (knowledge is power). Through the creation of art and through the dialogue art opens, through the capital's media and through national platforms, the message is spread across the country.

Being someone who has had to overcome trauma and a self-inflicted isolation for fear of being ‘different’ early on in life, I believe that our ability to transform a destructive experience into something meaningful and our willingness to look at life through the eyes of “Others” can be enriching and empowering. These have been recurring themes in my work. Both in art and my socially engaged praxis.

Being diagnosed with HIV can be a traumatic experience, as it alters one’s sense of identity. In our scientifically advanced societies HIV is something we can live with.  However, in Greece today stigma, faulty preconceptions, lack of awareness and fear tend to lead people who live with HIV in isolation and undermine public health, raising the number of new infections.

Through an installation with original material created by people who live and work with HIV, To Whom It May Concern aims to offer an opportunity for the public to relate to HIV not as a threat, but as a manageable as well as enlightening human experience.

In collaboration with ‘Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art’, Greek Association of Seropositive People ‘Positive Voice’ and NGO for those who live with HIV ‘Centre For Life’.

I initially held a creative workshop. Through drawing, writing and physical contact, participants shared their experience of living with HIV. As the open call period was short, the group was rather small. Our time was also limited, but their responses gave us an opportunity to start finding a language about HIV. I then continued working individually with each of them from a distance by writing and drawing. As most of them were artists, they were given space and a budget to transform their own thoughts and images into works of art. The mini project concluded with an informal public presentation/workshop. The audience had an opportunity to experience the material and works of art with the participants and share their own images and thoughts on HIV in a process that culminated in a collective discussion about it. The whole project was conducted in collaboration with AIDS-Hilfe Weimar & Ostthüringen e.V. and the Office of Equal Opportunity, Weimar.