Tag: HIV

How does it make you feel? Art, Artivism & Art Therapy


This has become a bit of an inside joke with my therapists over the years.

“Yes, Todd. But how does it make you feel?” usually comes after I describe an event or situation with clarity & objectivity from my analytical left brain. It is harder for me to connect with the emotions and feelings that come up.

This question has also started to permeate my creative work. I’m a queer artivist – I bring my activism into my art. It’s also a form of art therapy, helping me to reclaim the shame & stigma I experience in life through digital creations. Music and art have the power to heal. 

I will also tell you that I struggle at times to identify the emotions in a photograph – or the emotions I want a given image to convey to the viewer.

When I was encouraged to create a piece for the HIV Is Not A Crime art contest, I was initially frozen in my tracks. How could I best convey how I feel when I think about HIV criminalization? What does stigma feel like? Where do these feelings come from?

Working in this space can be traumatizing for many different reasons. Thinking about HIV criminalization and the effects it has on my mental health can be heavy at times, bringing up sadness, shame, guilt and other difficult emotions. 

With this project, I wanted to rescript the negative messaging around HIV criminalization. I wanted this to be a positive message. It is easy to identify the negative effects of criminalization – much harder to find and hold onto hope. Hope for change. Hope for a cure. Hope for a world free of stigma and discrimination. 

That first required me to search my soul and imagine – what would it feel like for our laws to finally be repealed and modernized? 

Two words came to mind – joy and dance.

I could literally picture myself dancing, which is my happy place. 

From that inspiration came this piece which I call “Happy Dance”

I will be exhibiting Happy Dance along with several other original art pieces at the Phoenix Theatre Nov 3-13, 2022 as part of the Spirit and Place Festival. This year’s theme is Identify. My pieces will be part reflection, part therapy, part celebration! Join us on November 9th for the main event, which includes the visual art show along with a panel discussion.

HIV Modernization
Ending The Stigma of People Living with HIV
Part of the Spirit & Place Festival

About this event

Through an art exhibit and panel discussion, learn how people living with HIV and their allies are working to end HIV stigma by modernizing Indiana’s outdated HIV criminal laws.

People living with HIV often face stigma and discrimination related to Indiana laws that criminalize them due to their positive HIV status. This event features speakers living with HIV who are working to end HIV criminalization through legislative change, activism, art, and community support.

A visual art show featuring Indy-based artist Contonnia Turner, Jr. and photographer/digital artist Todd Fuqua will provide a backdrop for the discussion. Contonnia Turner, Jr. is a talented young Black Hoosier with multiple layers of intersecting identity who creates artwork that reflects who he is physically, mentally, and spiritually. Todd Fuqua is an Indianapolis-based artivist (activism through art) who started a social movement called CelebrateUU, building on the concept of HIV Undetectable=Untransmittable (U=U).

Explore the exhibit and interact informally with artists beginning at 5:30. The Talk will begin at 6:15 moderated by Terrell Parker and will include HIV Modernization Movement Chair Dr. Carrie Foote, and Co-Chair Mark Anthony Hughes. The Phoenix bar will be open, and snacks will be provided.

A partnership between Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center and HIV Modernization Movement Indiana.

Contact the event organizers at 317-635-7529 or cmacy@phoenixtheatre.org.

Walk-ins welcome, but registration is strongly encouraged by Nov. 9.

ABOUT SPIRIT & PLACE. The Spirit & Place Festival (Nov. 3-13) celebrates the powerful role the arts, humanities, and religion play in community life and is housed in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. Learn more at spiritandplace.org

Register here

Remembering friends…telling their story


In the last couple days two very dear friends have been on my mind and help me with some things I’ve been facing. As such I wanted to take time to honor them and remember them because telling their stories keeps their memories alive in our hearts.

First was Phil. Phil was a very dear friend of mine in the early 90s – A mentor of sorts as I came out of the closet for the second time. (That’s another story for another day…) Phil taught me about living with dignity, enjoying the passion of music, and the value of investing time and energy with young adults. Phil was the first choral director for the Northernaires at North Central high school – a gospel choir at a public high school. He was also a man and lived with HIV. This was at a time when the world was very different. Our understanding and acceptance of the disease was far from what it is today. Phil took a calculated risk to share his same-sex partnership and his health situation (carefully and appropriately nonetheless…) with many of the students in his choir, particularly towards the end of his life in the mid 90s, as he died of complications related to AIDS. By doing so, Phil educated those kids, at a very critical time in their life, about HIV/AIDS…surely helping to reduce the stigma and misunderstanding among those teenagers, which played forward across relationships in future years & generations. He also showed them how to live with dignity…and ultimately how to die with dignity.

I was away on an international business trip when he passed. And fortunately my boss was very understanding and allowed me to fly home early in order to attend his memorial. The gospel choir performed at his memorial for a packed church (I believe at Trinity Episcopal in downtown Indy). And I will never forget seeing the one girl in the front row start to cry…and from there there was not a dry eye in the house. Those kids learned how to get through grief and loss at a very young age because let me tell you… They loved and respected their choral director. You could see it in their faces at the rehearsals and at their concerts.

I’ll never forget how Phil would remind them to tighten up their muscles and project… You should be able to hold up a quarter in the grip of your butt cheeks. And all it took on the night of the concert was still taking out a quarter and holding it up to the kids to remind them of proper posture and projection and muscle control. They knew the secret sign…and the audience had no idea what was being “passed” from director to singers in that moment…

Of course Phil was also the famous one who, at a house party at my place on Central, called out across the living room “hey everyone, let’s all chip in and buy Todd a butt.” Yes I have a flat ass thank you very much Phil for pointing it out. I love you dearly.

The second man that came to mind this week was Scott. Scott was our lay leader at Broadway. During my unemployment in 2010, he left his full-time career as a HR executive to follow his dream of helping people in the community through his gift as a life coach. My pastor recommended that I perhaps pair up with Scott and indeed I did. He became my life coach during my unemployment…as well as a close friend. Unfortunately, within months of starting our relationship, he was diagnosed with lymphoma. And within 6 to 8 months, passed away.

He, too, taught those around him how to live and how to die with dignity. Unfortunately, he also faced discrimination at the hands of our healthcare system in Indiana. Due to a loophole in our laws, he was unable to receive the care that he needed here in the state of Indiana because it was illegal for a person with HIV to be able to use their own blood or bone marrow for medical treatments, since it is illegal for people with HIV to give blood or be organ donors. This,of course, does not make sense in these cases…since it was for their own use and treatment. As a result of this discrimination, he had to fly out to California to seek the necessary treatment and by the time he got out there, it was too late.  They sent him back home to Indiana, where he lived out his final weeks with his hallmark smile and care for others.  The nurses on his floor, I remember, were particularly moved by Scott’s spirit…

Fortunately, his quiet legacy lives on, because his family took on the doctors and the hospitals…and with their support, got the law changed.  Now blood or bone marrow from an HIV/AIDS patient, for one’s own medical care, is  permitted in the State of Indiana. For those of us who know the story, we fondly call this the Scott C law. We know the story…and the legacy he left behind.

I think of Scott often when I use his life coaching techniques in my day-to-day life. And I think of Phil when I hear or see the Northernaires perform.

I love you both. Thanks for being my friend.