Revealing their life stories, participants in the Body Maps show at the Women's Studies Research Center exhibit the taxing effects of AIDS on the daily lives of its victims.The exhibition includes 18 maps: nine originals and nine reproductions on canvas. All of the artists hail from South Africa, where two-thirds of the world's HIV-positive population resides.

Body Maps started as part of the Memory Box Project at the University of Capetown, South Africa. The project aims to promote HIV awareness through the documentation of the lives of local women. Nine were being treated with drug therapy when they created their maps, while another group went unmedicated. Each artist worked with a partner to create their life-size self-portraits.

The artists traced their bodies onto a large sheet of butcher paper. Some women included scars indicating where they had been injured, attacked or abused by mobs, former lovers and family members. More metaphorical markings predominated: fire around the heart, a baby in the womb, and Bibles to symbolize the sources of their emotional pain as well as the strongholds of their faith.

Accompanying the works are the artists' written descriptions of the symbols around their bodies and of their life story. The group of women not receiving drug treatment commented on each other's body maps and what they learned from the other participants.

Particularly uplifting were the women's frequent comments about wanting to move on with their lives and refusing to let their disease get in the way of their dreams. Many wrote about buying a new house or car. Others wanted to help fellow HIV-positive women by becoming a pastor or counselor.

Many of the artists depicted and spoke on the importance of supportive friends. Two women, for example, drew their life-size self-portraits on one body map-one depiction in front of the other-to illustrate the importance of their mutual friendship.

Women's Studies Research Center director Shula Reinharz, along with Director of External Relations and the Arts Ana Davis and Curator Wendy Tarlow Kaplan, advocated for Body Maps to be exhibited at Brandeis. The three felt that HIV/AIDS awareness had "fallen from the collective consciousness" of worldwide women's issues.

"The exhibit brings you into women's lives and there is a personal connection to the disease-it is no longer just a statistic," Davis said.

Body Maps is on display through June 30. For more information on the exhibition, visit www.brandeis.edu/centers/wsrc.