Art showcase

Featured Artist: Lia Pas

Saskatoon-based multidisciplinary artist Lia Pas (she/her) developed ME/CFS after contracting a virus in 2015. Previously active as a composer/librettist, dancer, vocalist and instrumentalist, she found herself struggling to read, speak, or even listen to music. To keep creating, she turned to embroidery – and eight years later is renowned for her hand-embroidered creations, which take months to create and often illustrate the “invisible” neurological symptoms of ME/CFS.

“It is well known that most autoimmune diseases affect women more often than men, and fibre arts… have long been considered “women’s work” and not always taken seriously as art in the West. I am a woman illustrating my disease, my invisible symptoms, in a medium that has been kept alive by women… If I must create slowly, then let the slowness be a meditation, let the quiet be a source of introspection, let the threads of my symptoms express themselves in thread on linen.”

LIA PAS

Click on each art piece below to view a full-sized version, image description, and insights from the artist.

A black and white photo of Lia taken from slightly above. She is caucasian, has greying hair in a wavy bob, black cats eye glasses with thick frames, and is wearing a black shirt with a low neckline. She is lying back against a cushion and smiling slightly looking up at the camera.
A black and white photo of Lia taken from slightly above. She is caucasian, has greying hair in a wavy bob, black cats eye glasses with thick frames, and is wearing a black shirt with a low neckline. She is lying back against a cushion and smiling slightly looking up at the camera.

Connect with Lia:

An embroidery on a pale natural linen. There is a bone white diagram of a vocal apparatus, trachea, and bronchi/lungs. In between the branches of the bronchioles are small words embroidered in cursive in thin burgundy thread. They read: she breathed. Inhaled. exhaled. she knew. that breathing. was beauty. was the way. inside. to outside. when her breath. tightened. she found. ways. to soften. be still. to allow that. in. of the out. breath. to be. the. way through. she found the throughline. somehow. it. also found her. still. and breathing. deeply. each day was. new. each breath. a. different. path. always. through her. and. throughout her. such a. simple. thing, breath. such a journey. through. trees. and. branches. how the body knows. to still. itself. if we learn how. to. listen deeply.

she breathed (2018)

In the centre of some bone white linen, there is a spine embroidered in a thick satin stitch. Emanating from the spine are thick burgundy lines in an undulant oval shape. This oval is bisected across the middle. In the top half, there is a section outlined in burgundy filled with coiling blue lines and a similar section in the bottom half. The rest of the undulant oval is filled with fine coiling burgundy lines. The spine is very straight, the rest of the embroidery is very coiled and busy. Lia’s initials are stitched in fine thread the same colour as the cloth at the bottom right.

sensorium (2016)

An outline of a naked woman is embroidered on linen in the same bone white colour as the linen. She stands legs together, her right hand covering her groin, her left hand, palm up, extended slightly to her side. She looks to the right. Her entire body except for her belly is covered in intricate markings representing different neurological sensations. Her face is a mask of green lines, feathery grey lines cover her shoulders and chest. There is a thick band of intricate burgundy stitching around her waist. Her forearms and hands are covered in thick blue undulant lines. Her right leg has bands of burgundy along the muscles, with small dots around them. Her inner left leg has a thick line of blue running up it, with thin branches spreading towards her outer leg.

body map (2016)

An embroidery on bone white linen. There are many coral-like neurons in the vague shape of a brain embroidered in shades of blue. The bottom section is navy blue and transitions to a lighter blue at the top. The text at the bottom reads: she was tributaries, all electric.

she was tributaries (2016)

Created on Treaty 6 territory – the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota nations, and homeland of the Métis.

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