An 'unwavering' virtual exhibition exploring the debilitating and puzzling condition known as Long COVID has been launched online by a diverse team of artists and scientists, many of whom continue to feel the disease’s lingering effects.
Opening today, Long COVID – We are Here! hopes to raise awareness of the illness, advocating for a new open access global repository for the research, resources and treatment strategies required to better understand it and support those suffering.
Long COVID, also called post-COVID-19 syndrome, is a range of symptoms that affect some people that have caught and then otherwise recovered from COVID-19. Whilst most people feel back to their old selves within a couple of weeks of recovering, as many as 1 in 3 report months of lingering side-effects, including chronic fatigue, breathlessness and brain fog, leading to worrying uncertainty about the condition’s causes and how long it might last.
The exhibition has been organised by Relational Space, a non-profit art gallery and forum in New York that encourages artists and scientists to work together on imaginative and immersive installations. The new show, available through visitors’ web browsers, includes contributions from the worlds of medicine, journalism, conservation science, psychology and information technology, and will feature both traditional works and new media from the UK and US.
Long COVID – We are Here! is available free online
“Long COVID - We Are Here! guides the viewer through the COVID-19 and Long COVID journeys – what happens when the body gets COVID, how a person may feel dealing with it alone or how they are viewed by wider society,” said Dr Shona Paterson, a Global Challenges Research Fellow at Brunel University London.
“It takes on grief but also provides reading resources and highlights how people have helped each other during the last year in their communities and beyond. It is an unwavering examination of inequities and disparities, of isolation and consequences on multiple scales, evoking the need for empathy, awareness and action in the face of this disabling post-viral epidemic.”
The exhibition is the brainchild of Dr Leigh Jerome, the founder of Relational Space who contracted Long COVID in March last year and has since been inspired to act in support of her fellow sufferers.
“We are humbled by the courage of the millions of people who are experiencing Long COVID and are struggling to find help for their unbearable symptoms, often completely without support,” said Dr Jerome.
“Many of us have been sick with long COVID for over a year. Every day, until this pandemic is over, our numbers continue to grow.”
To visit Long COVID – We Are Here! please visit: Long COVID – We are Here!
Reported by:
Tim Pilgrim,
Media Relations
+44 (0)1895 268965
tim.pilgrim@brunel.ac.uk