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Red Ribbon
Commemorating World AIDS Day - December 1, 2007
A compelling series of six African proverb posters was created especially for the American Red Cross African American HIV/AIDS Program in 1992 by the late artist Damballah Dolphus Smith. As an artist, Smith drew upon the rich legacy of African art and history to illustrate six proverbs from African countries. Each proverb relates to a major message that was part of the African American HIV/AIDS Program.

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He who upsets a thing should know how to rearrange it. Sierra Leonean proverb

Damballah Dolphus Smith Damballah Dolphus Smith (1943-1992)
Damballah Dolphus Smith was a Washington-based visual artist who received his training at the Philadelphia College of Art. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the National Exhibition of Contemporary African American Art in Atlanta, and has been collected by the Afro-American Museum of History and Culture in Philadelphia, the U.S. Information Agency, the African American Scholars Council and numerous private collections. His works have also been published in Black Artists on Art, Art Papers, and Selected Essays: Art from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1980s.
"The images which have evolved from my life force have always been spiritual/cultural. The infinity of ancestral spirits has been a central recurring theme in my work."