Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how men living with HIV in Chile recover from biographical disruption after diagnosis. Combining art and anthropology, they created photographic mises en scène, providing access to inner spaces, and rearticulated their subversive potential by crafting their own representations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how men living with HIV in Chile recover from biographical disruption and rearticulate their life projects after diagnosis, in a context in which HIV is still stigmatized and silenced.

Combining art, media practice and anthropology within a Participatory Action Research framework, collaborators created intimate photographic mises-en-scene, providing access to inner spaces and rearticulating their subversive potential while being creators of their own representations.

This collaborative and visual approach provided an access to personal and sensitive narratives revealing the impact of the virus in their lives, and how —within time— they re-signified their identity as well as their relationships with others. Conceiving HIV notification as a biographical disruption, the collaborators not only created images but also reflected upon them, understanding this part of the process as a tool for sense making. By being authors of their own representations, they challenged ideas about HIV and re-imagined possible futures.