Exhibition ‘Zika Affecting Lives’: an experience report

Abstract

The Zika virus epidemic in Brazil mainly affected women and children and mobilized responses from science, society and the state, between 2015 and 2018. The Zika Social Sciences Network promoted several activities that involved social participation, among them, the exhibition Zika: lives that affect, unprecedented exhibition for the celebrations of the 120th anniversary of Fiocruz. The aim of this narrative is to report the process of building the exposition, with emphasis on the women contribution - mothers, managers, health professionals and researchers. It covers the period from October 2018 to August 2020. It starts out with the idea that the exhibition is a device for scientific dissemination with public engagement, whose curatorship involved the conception, production, finalization and readjustment of the exposure to the online version, in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. The results show the potential and the challenges of the collective construction mode - an experience that could affect other experiences. The narrative of the exhibition is made mostly by women, from different points of view, based on the issues that affect them. It highlights the prominent role of those women in mobilizing and responding to Zika, in science, in politics and in society.