What If? Chronic Illness Aesthetics and Politics in the Work of Paula Knight and Alison Larkman

This essay explores chronic illness aesthetics and politics as articulated in the art of Paula Knight and Alison Larkman, both of whom document experiences of chronic illness, including myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and Long COVID. I argue that Knight and Larkman document the creativity that emerges out of living with chronic illness through various art forms and modalities—graphic memoir, drawing, photography, and a collaborative art installation project. Their work generates a chronic illness aesthetics and politics that moves from the body out into the world and back again, foregrounding an ongoing query, What if?, echoing the title of one of Knight's drawings.