Kera Ling

My colored pencil drawings of human figures are the culmination of an interest in the effect of chronic physical and mental illness on the human body. In 2014, I was diagnosed with gastroparesis, an under-researched condition in which the stomach muscles stop moving. The struggles I went through to live a fulfilled life while healing my body led me to develop an interest in using art as a vehicle for therapy and community building.

These drawings display the efforts of illness survivors to reclaim agency over their unruly bodies through modelling their own poses for my figurative drawings. They volunteered through my health and art blog to model for drawings that represent the physical as well as psychological effects of long term illness, trauma, and isolation on people. Thus, these drawings also evoke the emotional challenges that are faced by all introspective human beings.