Passion Wins

This was a submission by Mariel García Montes for YAHAnet's first contest in summer 2008. It was the winning entry in the Visual Arts category.

Artist Statement:

The theme of this submission is the way passion manages to overcome rationality. Despite the major investment of resources and efforts in sex education, teenagers and adults continue to acquire HIV not out of ignorance, but out of a complicated phenomenon that is often labelled as “lack of self-control”. I chose to represent youth in this image through the alteration of some visual elements from the virtual world of Second Life.

To do good, we must not only want to do good, but to know how to do it. Education is aimed at the rational sphere of human kind; it is time to make better investment in education that will perhaps impact less people in number, but that will make sure to get the lucky ones involved entirely.

Passion wins today, and will probably win forever. If we manage to drive passion to what really matters, we will be able to overcome many of our disgraces.