Working with the curators of the Constitutional Court Art Collection (CCAC), Prof Alison Kearney took a group of university arts students to explore the affordances of learning about human rights through engaging with and responding to art in the collection. Students were taken on a tour of the collection. Then we engaged with the Long-Life Project Body maps created by the Bambanani Women’s Group in 2002. Body mapping is a form of art therapy and storytelling. The Long Life Project body maps were created by members of the Bambanani Women’s Group, to share their personal stories of living with HIV/AIDS. The group were among the first HIV positive mothers to receive ARVs to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV after the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the Treatment Action Campaign in 2002. Students then created their own body maps, which were installed on the windows in the Court Gallery, in dialogue with body maps in the collection. This afforded students the opportunity not only to engage with works in the collection, but to insert themselves into the story of democracy in South Africa, and to reflect on the ways that their lives have been made better through the activism of those who have come before.