Wizards of Poz is the first public-facing community campaign by HIV advocacy platform The Institute of Many (TIM). We’re doing it to celebrate our recent milestone of reaching 1000 members, which makes us the largest group of its kind in Australia, and one of the most significant in the world.
ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN
Every face in the campaign is HIV+.
As TIM edged closer to reaching our 1000th member, we knew we wanted to celebrate that milestone by putting a message out into the world. To achieve that, we teamed up with Bad Behaviour Publishing and gathered some of the TIM members who have made the choice to live boldly and put their status into the world.
In referencing the already camp queer masterpiece Wizards of Oz, we look back to these pop cultural icons and re-imagine them as just a few of the contemporary tropes of the gay and poz community.
Wizards of Poz isn’t a health promotion campaign- it’s a community empowerment one.
It’s a tricky balance, how to instil a sense of resilience in a community whilst balancing our responsibility to keep HIV negative people from contracting the virus. We don’t envy those charged with that responsibility. As an online gathering ground for People Living With HIV around the world, TIM has a different responsibility.
TIM and Wizards of Poz celebrates our community for all that it is complicated, messy, political, funny, full of love, and challenges us all to keep moving.
The campaign will run online through TIM’s social media and beyond, with accompanying messages based on TIM’s values around HIV resilience, stigma, sex-positivity, and paying rent on our privilege to be HIV+ in Australia in 2015 – a time in which we couldn’t have it better, and owe it those who went before us and those who still struggle, to keep moving forward.
WIZARDS OF POZ
by THE INSTITUTE OF MANY (TIM)
SHOT AND SHOPPED BY TRAVIS DE JONK (BAD BEHAVIOUR PUBLISHING)
COSTUMES BY DAMIEN ROSS
MAKE UP BY CHARLIE TREDWAY & DAMIEN ROSS
HAIR BY JOSHUA CAVANAGH
FEATURING: DEAN CAMILLERI, NIC HOLAS, ABBY LANDY, JEFF LANGE, SEBASTIAN ROBINSON, CHARLIE TREDWAY, THEODORE TSIPIRAS