Art showcase

Surreal collage of white person holding up their phone with both hands while lying down (photo taken from their perspective). The screen of the phone and underlying blanket are superimposed with a forest scene. It is green and lush with a small river running through it. A doe and black bear can be seen walking on the phone screen, and other animals including a turtle, buck, hare, chipmunk, owl and fox are present outside the phone. This gathering of animals symbolizes accessing community through a virtual space.
Image description: Surreal collage of white person holding up their phone with both hands while lying down (photo taken from their perspective). The phone screen and underlying blanket are superimposed with a forest scene. It is green and lush with a small river running through it. A doe and black bear can be seen walking on the phone screen, and other animals including a turtle, buck, hare, chipmunk, owl and fox are present outside the phone. This gathering of animals symbolizes accessing community through a virtual space.

Door to the Outside World

by Christina Baltais

In this piece, Christina shares how essential digital access is to so many in her community. “This collage is about how a phone allows me to connect to the outside world,” she explains. “Being online is often the only avenue for socializing and support for many living with ME/CFS.” That being said, even this form of access isn’t open to everyone: “Those with the most severe forms of this disease cannot engage online.”

Christina Baltais (she/her) is an artist who resides in Toronto, Canada. She has lived with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME, also known as ME/CFS) for the past 18 years and draws on her personal experience of chronic illness to create collage, photography, sculpture, and makeup art. She has also been involved in organizing fundraising and advocacy initiatives, such as the annual ME/CFS Art Auction and the May 12th #GoBlueForMECFS campaign. She is a patient partner with ICanCME Research Network‘s steering committee and the medical education working group. ME is a deeply stigmatized and contested illness, and she hopes her work is one ripple in the wave of change the ME community desperately needs for greater awareness, compassion, research funding, and treatments.


Enjoy Christina’s work? Find merch featuring her digital collage ‘Wings of Hope’ in our online shop, in support of the ME | FM Society of BC!

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