Stories Not Symptoms

culture 1:25 Stories Not Symptoms

By:

Elizabeth McVoy

27 Mar 2019 123

The University Libraries’ exhibit Stories Not Symptoms: An Exhibition of Graphic Medicine, located on the fourth floor of Newman Library, highlights the combination of the bright and whimsical nature of comic books with the medical jargon of disease and illness to tell the health stories of individuals. Through the abstract art, comics add approachability and emotion to the stories and clinical data. The exhibit features work by multiple graphic medicine artists and an interactive opportunity for visitors to create their own graphic medicine.

[00:00:03] >> This exhibit is about graphic medicine and graphic medicine is a great way to combine medical narratives and comic books. It makes health issues much more approachable. Sometimes they're funny, but they're definitely educational and informative. We're really excited about this exhibit because it combines, it has this intersection of art and science that we usually think are so disparate and that they usually don't talk to each other. [00:00:28] And this is a great avenue to really combine someone's love of art and someone's love of public health or science and really navigate and discover new career paths. The exhibit is interactive, so you can actually draw your own comic panels about what you want to see in graphic medicine. [00:00:44] Since we do have a variety of issues here but maybe an issue that you're passionate about is not up here you can actually you can actually draw something. And we have books about macular degeneration, we have comic books about dealing with depression and anxiety, dealing with a cancer diagnosis, dealing with disability, and they're all approachable. [00:01:06] They inform the public about these different issues and they're really great tools to really have those hard conversations. So if you are interested in public health, if you're interested in health education, if you're interested in art, then you should definitely come out and check out the exhibit.