“When you think of HIV and AIDS, what picture of a person comes into your mind? Does that person ever look like you? It doesn’t, right? Like you don’t even think about your friends. You always think about somebody that’s in a different, unfortunate situation than you are. But HIV sounds like you, it sounds like me, sounds like her.”
After learning that Black women in Orange County were 12 times more likely to contract HIV than their white counterparts, Chianna Collins was tasked with raising awareness by doing more than just billboards or bus wraps. Instead of traditional boring marketing, as a Black woman herself, she wanted to incorporate music and pop-up testing to make her campaign more culturally driven.
Inspired by the Trap Music Museum in Atlanta, Collins devised an immersive art installation to spotlight the stories of Black women and address the issue of HIV prevention. However, when she took this idea to CityArts in downtown Orlando, she was turned down.
Despite her frustrations, as a co-creator of the BLK Room Project, Collins refused to let this setback get in the way of the work she was trying to do. She decided to create her own installation, Her Art Works: An Ode to Black Women, bringing her vision to life on Thursday, Dec. 4.
Her stories are immersively told one by one, following visitors from room to room. The experience consists of an interview with a Black woman living with HIV, whose story is segmented and connected to the individual artwork featured in the exhibit.
The free event also features photographers and other artists, whose pieces are displayed throughout the venue, along with a DJ, free food and mocktails, and live testimonials.
With the event’s third year fast approaching on Thursday, Collins tells Orlando Weekly that Her Art Works has reached full capacity every year so far.
“It’s really a dope concept, because obviously, nobody’s doing it,” Collins says. “We do it in honor of World AIDS Day. And usually it’s somber, the events are really sad. This event has a lot of awareness, but it’s also an event that you get enjoyment from, because it’s like different walks of life. We’ve had police officers come on their break and go through the experience; we have husbands and wives who will bring their children. It’s just a whole vibe to be able to learn about HIV and AIDS and prevention in a different way, because in our community, we don’t talk about it. So it gets us to start having that conversation.”
For Collins, storytelling and immersive art play a role in shifting the narratives around HIV and health equity, especially for Black women. Contrary to popular stereotypes about women living with HIV, she says that most of these women are not homeless and are either married or in long-term relationships.
So when talking to an audience that’s not necessarily thinking about HIV precautions or prevention options, Collins says you have to be creative. People don’t want to be lectured. And they don’t want a PSA. Instead, Collins made it an experience.
To illustrate, Collins says one of the installations, What Does HIV Sound Like?, has visitors line up at a gumball machine, insert a quarter, and twist the handle to receive a capsule with a name on it. Then they head to an audio experience room with phone booths, where the code is scanned, and the woman whose name is in the capsule relates her experience with HIV.
Collins describes some of the symbolism behind another installation, Is This Stigma, which is in a completely black-lit room, with stigmatizing phrases and words illuminated under a blacklight.
“So when you read the words and the phrases, you’re asking yourself, ‘Is this stigma?’” Collins says. “Because in our society, we know that stigma is shameful, stigma is people not wanting to touch something because someone has HIV, and people being afraid to share things with them, and it’s always only in the gay community. So that’s the stigma that we are aware of, that we see in society.”
But there’s another side to stigmas when it comes to being gay in the Black community, one that Collins says people don’t often talk about, because it’s labeled as a stigma when it shouldn’t be. She points to Miami, where 100% of the new HIV cases among Black women were contracted through heterosexual sex.
In a lot of cases where the women are married or in long-term relationships, Collins says that the men likely have a problem with monogamy or have insecurities about their sexual orientation. She says that it boils down to more than just dishonesty, but a fear of being judged for their sexual preferences.
“It shows how far behind we are as a culture,” Collins says. “Because when it comes to the gay community, they’re on it. They’re on PrEP, they’re educated, they know what’s up. And even when it comes to white women, it just shows that, culturally, there’s something different going on with white women and white men than it is with Black women and Black men. And it’s like, we still have so much further to go. Because it’s like, what is the problem here, that we’re contracting this, but the percentage of what we make up of the population is crazy, it’s so small. But then we’re getting HIV at a higher rate. It’s because the conversations aren’t being had; it’s the access to care; it’s the stigma; it’s all of those things that still play a part within our culture. And having these conversations and being able to put it out to where we will relate and will gravitate to, I think that’s what’s important.”
With one of the next steps in preventative care being to address bisexuality in the Black community, Collins says that honesty is something that can’t be forced. In the meantime, her focus remains on teaching Black women to be aware of the issue and how to protect themselves, “because you can’t leave your health in somebody else’s hands.”
And after doing this work for a few years now, Collins says she can finally feel proud to have made a difference with what she has created. If there is one thing visitors take away from Her Art Works, she hopes it’s to treat their partners with care and recognize that their actions impact the people that they love.
“I feel like if people honestly start thinking about that, then a lot of the stuff can be preventative. It’s not just about you, and your desires and what you want. It’s about the people around you as well.”
6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4, Soliman Productions Studios, 6626 Kingspointe Parkway, solimanproductions.com, free.
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
Related Stories
Here are some Orlando-centric gift ideas perfect for this holiday season
SeaWorld’s 50-year-old killer whale Katina has died
This article appears in Dec. 3-9, 2025.