A new immersive exhibition exploring South Africa’s history of HIV/AIDS activism and queer community care opened at Latitudes Centre for the Arts in Johannesburg on Saturday, 5 September.
Acts of Care: A Living Memorial to the Township AIDS Project combines GALA Queer Archive’s archival material, virtual and augmented reality, projection and participatory experiences to bring the history of the Township AIDS Project (TAP) into the present.
Founded in 1989, TAP provided safer-sex education, counselling, HIV testing, support groups, home-based care and volunteer training at a time when HIV/AIDS was surrounded by fear, stigma and misinformation.
Turning memory into care
For Keval Harie, Director of the GALA Queer Archive, the exhibition is about turning memory into something active.
“Memory must do more than commemorate, it must generate care,” Harie said at the opening.
He described TAP as an organisation that insisted people had “a right to knowledge, to healthcare, to dignity and to lives free from shame.” Harie also reminded visitors that the exhibition is both a celebration and an invitation.
“Today is of course a celebration,” he said, describing it as “a celebration of an extraordinary exhibition of the people whose histories it carries”.
But, he added, it is also “an invitation to remember differently.”
A generation taught to care
Among those with a personal connection to TAP is activist, artist and filmmaker Dr Beverley Ditsie, who volunteered with the organisation as a young person.
“I was 18, wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, loud, full of fire in my belly that needed all sorts of direction, but I was in safe hands,” Ditsie recalled.
The work involved breaking deeply entrenched taboos around sex and HIV.
“We were trained to do something phenomenal, to not only talk about sex in any room and not just gloss over it,” she said.
For Ditsie, TAP ultimately taught a much broader lesson about wellbeing.
“We were also teaching self-love,” she said, adding: “This is how to be well. This is how to be healthy. This is how to take care of yourself.”
She described TAP’s legacy as immeasurable, saying it “gave birth to leaders, to healers, to members of parliament, to CEOs” and many others.
Technology meets history
Benjamin Cabaut, Deputy Head of Mission and First Counsellor of the French Embassy in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi, said Acts of Care demonstrates how technology can create new ways of engaging with history.
“Not technology for its own sake, but technology in the service of memory, storytelling, public engagement, and most importantly, care,” Cabaut said.
He highlighted the collaboration between archives, artists and immersive technology, saying these partnerships can “broaden access to cultural heritage” and create new opportunities for dialogue and reflection.
Cabaut also praised the wider creative team, saying their work contributes to making “South Africa a vital hub for digital culture, immersive arts and dialogue”.
Developed through Futures_Past: Amplifying Memory with Immersive Technologies, the exhibition is an initiative of the Embassy of France in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi and IFAS (French Institute of South Africa), in partnership with Electric South.
Acts of Care runs until 1 December 2026 at the Latitudes Centre for the Arts, transforming the TAP archive from a record of the past into a space where audiences can witness, recognise and participate in a continuing legacy of care.
Below are some photos of the opening of the exhibition.
