Art showcase

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

Christina Baltais 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 is also involved in organizing fundraising and advocacy initiatives, such as the annual ME/CFS Art Auction, and the May 12th #GoBlueForMECFS campaign. 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.

Did you know? You can enter to win a prize pack with artwork by Christina Baltais (Words As Medicine) in our Benefit + Awareness Month prize draw until June 1, 2023!

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Surreal collage of a white person holding up their phone with both hands while lying down. (The photo taken from their perspective). The phone screen and underlying blanket are superimposed with a lush green forest scene with a small river running through it. A doe and black bear are walking within 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 a white person holding up their phone with both hands while lying down. (The photo taken from their perspective). The phone screen and underlying blanket are superimposed with a lush green forest scene with a small river running through it. A doe and black bear are walking within 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.

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