KYRIANNA

In a study done in 2017 it was found that over 60% of adults live with at least one chronic condition. Maybe that’s you, your parent, your child, or maybe your best friend but they’ve never told you. How many chronic conditions can you name? How many of those can you describe?

 

Developing a chronic condition takes away the agency you have over your own life. It's confusing, often painful, maybe embarrassing or debilitating at times. The added layer of many conditions being essentially invisible to most makes for a frustrating battle with ableism, stereotypes, and at times outright disbelief from others that any such condition is even being experienced.

In our culture there is rarely space to talk about pain or discomfort.

 

Having spent several years finding comfort from her own chronic pain in self-portraits, KYRIANNA began creating portraits of other people suffering with chronic conditions. She has worked with many different people of all ages and backgrounds. Each demographic and each person faces a unique set of difficulties that make each portrait varied on many levels.

 

In order to create these portraits KYRIANNA has a several-step interview process. The voice of the subject is ultimately the most important piece here, so she begins by going through a loose, two page questionnaire that allows her to hear various aspects of their journey. E.g. When did your symptoms begin? Do you have a diagnosis? How has it affected your mental health and relationships with others? Etc.. This is one of the most crucial parts. Most clients share that they have never had anyone ask them about their conditions and really listen and care about what they had to say. There’s opportunity for catharsis just in that.

 

KYRIANNA has strong visions of visual metaphors for her self-portraits. She guides the people she works with through a process where they can come up with their own idea of how to visualize their symptoms in a way that feels genuine and authentic to them. Each person should leave the project feeling seen and heard, and having a visual articulation of their condition that allows perhaps for more understanding from the people around them, as well as personal validation of what can at times be a frustratingly intangible struggle.

 

 

Each time KYRIANNA exhibits this project it provides a three-layered impact: a therapeutic and cathartic experience for the people in the paintings, viewers with chronic conditions feel seen and represented, and an increase in social consciousness and compassion around these conditions and what it’s like to live with them.