Chronic Lyme, Disability Advocacy, and the Role of Art in Managing, Understanding, and Living with Illness with Holly Ahern, Jessica D. Brier, Jiatong Lu,and Mary Beth Pfeiffer

This panel is occasioned by the current CPW exhibition, Nowhere Land, and will address issues central to that exhibition’s content, including the role of art and disability advocacy in people’s experience of chronic Lyme disease. Nowhere Land is an ongoing documentary project that examines, with fresh, creative, and broad range, the systemic failures of the U.S. medical system in addressing chronic tick-borne illnesses. After her own neurological Lyme diagnosis in 2021, artist Jiatong Lu began interviewing fellow Lyme patients, and through a combination of text, photographs, and archival documents, she highlights the fugitive and insidious nature of Lyme. Lu’s imagery, alternately abstract and concrete, reveals the profound physical, psychological, and financial toll of this often overlooked, hidden disease.

Moderated by Jessica D. Brier (Curator of Photography, Loeb Art Center, Vassar College), this panel will include Holly Ahern (Emeritus Professor of Microbiology, SUNY Adirondack and Chief Scientific Officer, Aces Diagnostics), Jiatong Lu (artist), and Mary Beth Pfeiffer (investigative reporter, Author of Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change).