Safe Art

Fruit metaphors in Hong Kong, babies in Malaysia. Emma O'Brien takesa look at safe sex campaigns in South East Asia, the subject of the UTSGallery's latest exhibition- Rubber Love.

A banana in a plastic bag says wear a condom in Hong Kong. A bunch ofBananas depicting the host of nasties that can be transmitted through unprotected sex.

The word for the yellow fruit in Cantonese sounds ironically like that for venereal disease, an irony the Hong Kong government decided to play with when devising posters to promote AIDS awareness and safe sex.

Rubber Love is an exhibition of posters from the public health campaigns on safe sex and HIV/AIDS in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. It is headlining at the University of Technology Gallery from 29 May to the 22 June.

"It is not just the aesthetics of the posters. There are lots of levels of reading into the posters, lots of subtext, and I think designers should be aware of that," says Leong Chan, co-curator of Rubber Love. "They shouldn’t allow themselves to be treated as pawns because that leads to things like stereotyping and victimisation as a feature of their work."

Over the years, Chan and his colleague, Dr Raymond Donovan, have been collecting examples of Southeast Asian graphic art. Chan, currently doing his thesis on this subject, thought the collection would be ideal for the UTS Gallery space. "UTS has a lot of international students so I think it would be interesting for them to see these posters from their native countries," he said. "Australian safe sex and AIDS awareness also tends not to take the multi-cultural aspect into account, they place emphasis on the responsibility of the individual, whereas as many of these posters show in Asia the emphasis is on the collective responsibility, responsibility to one’s family."

Women and babies as the innocent victims of husbandry philandering are a strong theme in many of the posters featured in the exhibition.

The posters range from those created by the government to the works of independent organisations like Hong Kong’s AIDS Concern.

"The government posters are very staid, very don’t do this, do that," says Chan. One produced by the Malaysian government puts it simply- "To be safe: Do not use dahdah (drugs). Do not share needles’.

A poster from the Thailand military depicts a soldier decked out in camouflage gear with the words "Don’t lose in the battle of love: Use a condom!"

"The posters done by NGO’s are often the ones that target minority groups like gays, women and migrant workers," says Chan.

Some of the posters from Hong Kong are aimed at wealthy businessmen who are increasingly attending popular ‘sex tours’ of Mainland China.

Another poster is aimed at empowering Philippine domestic workers in Hong Kong on their rights when it comes to sexual assault or harassment by an employer.

A curvaceous model in a tight rubber dress is accompanied by the message-‘Boys are into Rubber’. This poster is the work of snazzy advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi for the Singapore government and targets the sophisticated young Singaporean urban-dweller. In comparison, a Thai poster with a similar safe sex message, features a happy rural family in traditional clothes. It is evident that the curators chose to focus on the subtle differences inherent in the language and types of representation used by the four countries.

Despite being designed for public campaigns in Southeast Asia, many of the posters features English or English translations. Chan says this reflects the lasting influence of British colonisation on Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, all former English outposts. Thailand is the exception, with many of the posters focussing on native traditions and ways of thinking.

"Thailand has a unique approach to AIDS and safe sex education, as their culture and religion are quite different," says Chan. "Thai people are quite used to condoms because prior to AIDS their government was active in a program to encourage birth control."

Chan points out that many of the posters do not deal with discrimination towards people with the HIV virus with Hong Kong as the exception. They produced a series of posters featuring people with HIV portrayed in various ‘normal’ situations and talking about their everyday lives. "It is aimed at saying, we have HIV or AIDS but we don’t have funny faces or green horns or anything, we are normal people that happen to have a disease," says Chan.

Rubber Love will travel to Melbourne as part of the cultural program of the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) from 5-10 October. It is also touring various locations in Southeast Asia in 2002. "So the people in those places can see the posters as a collection too," says Chan.

You can catch Rubber Love at the UTS Gallery, Design and Architecture Building, Level 4, Harris Street, Ultimo, until the 22 June.

Call 9514 1652 for more details.