The Symptomatology Series

Lia Pas is a multidisciplinary artist who works in image, text, and sound exploring body and states of being. She was an active composer/performer and poet/librettist until 2015 when she became disabled with ME/CFS. Since then her work has focused on fibre arts and writing with some small forays back into music. Her symptomatology and anatomy embroideries have been featured in numerous online publications and are part of the SK Arts permanent collection.

Lia Pas was a musician and composer when she suddenly became disabled by post-viral myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in 2015. She found that embroidery fulfilled her creative needs and began stitching her symptoms as a meditative and restorative practice. Raised by a physiologist, her interest in anatomical art started young, and she uses a combination of historical illustrations with her own medical imaging to create her fibre art.

Lia’s symptomatology series explores her many symptoms of ME/CFS and other autoimmune conditions from an experiential perspective making invisible symptoms visible as embroidered textures and colours. The specificity of anatomy is interspersed with freehand stitching done in the moment her symptoms are experienced. Poetic text is added as another layer in the limen between research and phenomenology. These pieces play with finding the sublime in gross anatomy as a way to understand Lia’s own illness experience as well as to help others find knowledge and acceptance of their own symptomatologies.

body map (2016): A map of sensations of paresthesia, pain, and neuropathy experienced with the onset of ME/CFS.

paresthesia (face) (2016): A depiction of the facial tingling experienced by the artist.

sensorium (2016): A spine surrounded by lines depicting the neurological sensitivities present in ME/CFS.

she was tributaries (2016): A depiction of the electrical storm in the brain that is usually called “brain fog”.

neurasthenia (2017): A depiction of neuroimmune fatigue and PEM (post-exertional malaise).

paresthesia (tongue 2) (2018): A tongue showing the tingling experienced by the artist.

push, pull, & tingle (2018): A hand showing the paresthesias/tingling and neuropathies experienced by the artist.

she breathed (2018): A trachea and bronchi with a poem about learning to breathe easily while experiencing air hunger.

Bleeding Vessel (2022): A uterus showing fibroids, an ovarian cyst, endometrial cancer, and blood clots.

tethered by fluid & ligaments (2023): A liver and biliary system showing the strictures and small liver abscesses of primary schlerosing cholangitis (PSC).