Having spent several years painting self portraits as a coping strategy for her own chronic pain, KYRIANNA extended her portrait practice to others via interview, metaphor, and exhibition. KYRIANNA enacts a substantial asynchronous interview process that prompts participants, all of whom identify as chronically ill and/or experience chronic pain, to reflect on their illness narrative: “When did your symptoms begin? Do you have a diagnosis? How has it affected your mental health and relationship with others?” While these questions feel like soft echoes of a clinical intake form, their responses guide representational paintings steeped in metaphor and the rendering of invisible pain. Mushrooms, stalactites, vines and more crystallize as tumorous visualizations of internal sensations.

S_D/B: How, if at all, have you used your art practice to collect or create soft(qualitative) data on a lived experience (i.e: illness, pain, grief, trauma, etc.)?

K: My artistic practice as it relates to others involves extensive gathering of qualitative data. As I talk to each person I carefully gather and record lived experiences of chronic pain and illness, often closely overlapping with one another and presenting a vivid picture of the careful ways this community is undermined and mistreated on a systemic level.

S_D/B: If applicable, what kind of corresponding hard(quantitative) data had accumulated in relation to this lived experience?

K: Through my collection of qualitative data, quantitative data emerges about this demographic. Statistics on wait time for diagnosis, comorbidities, frequency of medical gaslighting, etc have become clear to my through my extensive discussions with dozens of members of the chronically unwell.

S_D/B: Has your creative practice altered, ameliorated, or otherwise defamiliarized your relationship with this lived experience? If so, how?

K: My creative practice beyond anything has showed me how unbearably banal my experiences as someone with a chronic condition are. My struggles against a rigged system as well as my own grief are starkly ordinary. I no longer feel alone in my unfairness, while being all the more driven to document and express these feelings and voices.