Stephanie Wilde (born 1952, USA) is known for her detailed and elaborate work in rich jewel-like colours. Her style has overtones of the fin-de siècle, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Despite its intensely decorative character her work focuses on social and political issues. Here her subject is the impact of AIDS in Africa, a subject she began exploring in her art in the early 1980s. There is personal resonance to this subject as well. The birth of her son with a rare blood disorder, and the terror of knowing that his constant need for transfusions exposed him to the danger of infection, drove her to investigate the epidemic and address it in her art. Eventually she travelled to West Africa to see the effects of the disease at first hand. AIDS in Africa has been a perennial theme in her work since. The title SLIM is a reference to the fact that AIDS was known in Africa ‘as the slim disease’ because of its chronic wasting effects on the body in the later stages.