#hltsad

On June 5, 1981 the first five cases of HIV were reported in the USA. That was forty years ago today.

Wednesday, June 5, marks HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day (HLTSAD) 2019. Created in 2013 by Tez Anderson and the Let’s Kick ASS—AIDS Survivor Syndrome—advocacy group, the day recognizes and celebrates the bravery and fortitude of the estimated 300,000 Americans who have been living with the virus for 25 years or more (in other words, about 25% of the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV). It’s also a chance to highlight the unique challenges facing this population.

Tuesday, June 5, marks the fifth annual HIV Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day (HLTSAD) 2018. This year’s theme is “It Is (Still) Not Over.”

Annual awareness days help to educate the general public and specific communities about HIV/AIDS. Since the virus affects people from all walks of life, the number of awareness days has increased over the years. Display this poster to remind you of upcoming awareness days, and use the hashtags shown to promote them on social media.

Tuesday 26 May 2026

TLDR

24 hand-painted abstract portraits paired with para-fictional speakers and testimonals shaped by research, community knowledge, and lived experience

Honouring HIV Long Term Survivors on HIV Long Term Survivors Awareness Day on 5 June #HLTSAD

Witness: honouring HIV Long Term Survivors

STORIES: Witness presents 24 hand-painted gouache portraits of HIV long-term survivors, honouring decades of survival for HIV Long Term Survivors Awareness Day (5 June).

The collection represents people living with HIV across Australia, Rwanda, India, Russia, Ukraine, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan, spanning diagnoses from 1984 to 2002. It honours those who have lived with HIV for decades, who buried friends and lovers, who waited years for medicine that would keep them alive. These are people who were told they had months to live and are now in their 60s and 70s. People who contracted HIV before effective treatment existed. People born with the virus who have never known life without it.

Parafictive personas

These parafictional narratives are not real people. While inspired by the real experiences of those who've lived decades with HIV, each individual portrayed is an invented persona grounded in the historical accuracy of the lived experience. The names, stories, history, locations, and testimonials, are all informed by research, community knowledge, and lived experience.

Each persona is a constructed narrative, a fictional individual holding emotional and experiential truth. Some originate in the pre-HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy) years when survival meant waiting for medicine that didn't yet exist, others in Russia's 1990s epidemic, another from Ukraine's delayed treatment access, two from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and several intersect with Australia's migration policies.

As an artist working with themes of witness, survival, and resilience, parafiction allows me to honour the truth of these experiences without appropriating individual real lives.

The testimonial voice

On the blockchain, each portrait carries a longer description written in the subject's voice. First person. This decision was deliberate.

Medical and historical language creates distance. Third-person narration positions the artist as authority over the subject. First-person testimonial centres the humanity and agency of the person living the experience, even when that person is a parafictional construction. It's also a choice that aligns with documentary and oral history traditions: the witness speaks. We listen.

Pre-HAART survivors

Roughly 30% of the collection represents pre-HAART survivors; people diagnosed before 1996 when effective treatment became available. These are the people who survived on hope, stubbornness, and luck. Who watched friends die while waiting for medicine that didn't yet exist.

Robert, diagnosed 1987. Trevor, 1988. Frank, 1988. Stephen, 1989. Meera, contracted HIV 1993-94 as a child in India, unaware. Ntwali, 1993 in Rwanda. Keza, 1994 during the genocide.

These survivors carry a particular kind of weight: survivor guilt, the knowledge that they're alive when so many others aren't.

Diversity matters

The collection also represents the breadth of HIV long-term survival: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people navigating racism and stigma in healthcare systems. Refugees fleeing genocide, war, and persecution. Trans people struggling for both HIV care and gender-affirming healthcare. Immigrants escaping countries where treatment didn't exist or stigma was lethal. Serodiscordant couples, straight and gay. People born with HIV. Heterosexual couples who live with HIV and people whose diagnoses reshaped their identities and life paths. HIV is not a single story. It never was.

Recognising HIV long-term survivors

HIV Long Term Survivors Awareness Day exists because real people living with HIV for decades are still here. Still showing up. Still carrying the weight of outliving a generation. They deserve recognition, not as heroes or inspiration, but as people who have survived and are surviving.

STORIES: Witness is my attempt to honour that. To sit with the complexity of survival. The grief that never ends, the resilience that looks nothing like triumph, the quiet determination to keep going.

Most of the time, as someone living with HIV and knowing many survivors, at times it was difficult to work on this collection. These portraits won't comfort you. They're not meant to.

Perhaps they'll make you pause.

Perhaps they'll make you ask: What does it mean to witness?

What was witnessed during this epidemic?

And what are we still witnessing?

Trevor - diagnosed 1986 and hid his own status at work for over a decade

Jill - diagnosed 1990 during a routine medical check

Wei - an international student from Taiwan diagnosed 2015

Michael - contracted HIV through a blood transfusion in 1984 when he was five years old

Andrea - diagnosed in 1995 before transitioning in 2003

João - diagnosed at 28 years old, in Dili early-2000s

Ben & Laura - diagnosed 2001 at 19 years old before meeting and marrying Laura in 2015

Martin - diagnosed in 1994 before medical transition for gay transmen was understood

Dr Chen - diagnosed in 1993 during her medical residency before specialising in infectious disease treating hundreds of people living with HIV

Aunty Janice - Wiradjuri woman diagnosed in 1993

Daniel - diagnosed in 1999 as a high school teacher, terrified students or parents would find out

Mai - diagnosed in 1996 while training to be a nurse

Stephen - diagnosed in 1989 while he was a touring musician playing pubs across Australia

Kila - born with HIV in 1997 in Port Moresby

Yuri - diagnosed in 2000 at 25 years old during Ukraine's epidemic peak

Sarah - diagnosed in 2000 at age 22 after a relationship breakup

Makoto - diagnosed in mid-1990s in Tokyo

Oksana - contracted HIV at 15 years old in Moscow during Russia's HIV epidemic in 1998

Frank - diagnosed in 1988, lost his partner to AIDS five years later

Meera - contracted HIV in 1993-94 after an arranged marriage in rural India as a child

Ntwali - contracted HIV in 1993 at 24 years in Rwanda

Keza - contracted HIV during the 1994 Rwandan genocide at age 12

Helen - diagnosed in 2000 in her early 30s after an overseas business trip

Robert - diagnosed in 1987, when a positive result felt like a death sentence

24 pieces. Minted on objkt.com.

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𝐇𝐈𝐕 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐠-𝐓𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏 commemorates long-term survivors of the epidemic and raises awareness of their needs.