Allison Tunis + Collaborators

The Chronic Illness Art Project

by

Almost all people have a public face they present to the world. Usually, it’s the successful and smiling Facebook photo version of themselves set against exotic beaches. Moments of doubt, illness and despair lie hidden in the darkness of their bedrooms.

Edmonton-based artist Allison Tunis and nine collaborators with various health-related conditions open doors to these private and shadowy spaces. Their show, The Chronic Illness Art Project, is at McMullen Gallery in Edmonton until Dec. 3. It offers a rare peek at both sides of the self: the polished and sanitized exterior and the messy, multifaceted inner self.   

Tunis’s cross-stitched portraits are suspended throughout the gallery in head-sized embroidery hoops. Viewers walk among these works and come face to face with Tunis’s self-portrait and her portraits of the nine collaborators she sourced through an open social media call – one she also shared with organizations such as the Schizophrenia Society of Alberta.

These portraits are so meticulously crafted that they wouldn’t be out of place in the famed art and design Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England. Consider the front view of A Dark Place Full of Sharp Things. It is an intricately stitched and almost photo-realistic image of Wesley Jones, a young man Tunis met through her open call. He smiles from behind trendy glasses, his baseball hat askew, relaxed arms hanging at his side.

The reverse image shows a very different, deeply personal side of Jones. To create this and other inner-self-portraits, Tunis consulted her collaborators at every step. Her inspiration came from an artwork Jones made during an art therapy session to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder. He now appears as a monster draped in a cloak woven from T-pins. They pierce his body and jab a tiny silhouette huddled at the bottom of the image. There is no escape. Jones is trapped within himself.

Tunis is keenly aware of the courage it took for Jones, and for all of her collaborators, to share their stories. As an artist and art therapist who graduated from The Vancouver Art Therapy Institute in 2013, she knows that art can both heal and disturb. But her knowledge didn’t fully prepare her for the near trauma she felt as she stitched the reverse portraits.

Tunis’s own inner self-image is among the most gruelling. It depicts the chaos and constant buzzing in her mind and body as she struggles to cope with multiple disabilities. A rock tied to her chest represents the weight and pressure of anxiety attacks. Her jaw is clenched and bound by metallic threads. Red beads scattered along her arms and legs represent skin-picking. Radiating red spheres represent areas of pain. The scribbled background text depicts fragments of self-soothing mantras such as lines from the Lord’s Prayer that Tunis recited obsessively throughout her youth.

Despite such devastating imagery, this exhibition’s sincerity and community spirit make it uniquely healing. Its overriding message to people with chronic conditions is: “You are not alone”.

“A lot of people have illnesses,” says Tunis. “People in their life don’t even know because we stigmatize it or it’s considered private.”  But the art from Tunis and her collaborators embraces more than people with chronic conditions. As viewers peer into these depictions of the dark and frightening spaces of the psyche, many undoubtedly leave feeling a little less lonely, less judged and more included. ■

The Chronic Illness Art Project by Allison Tunis + Collaborators is at McMullen Gallery in Edmonton from Oct. 10 to Dec. 3.

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McMullen Gallery

8440 112 St, University of Alberta Hospital, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2B7

780-407-7152

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