Artist's Statement: 2020: Single View.

Abstract

I drew 2020: Single View, on the cover of this issue, with ink directly on the plastic surface of an antique X-ray view box. My artwork depicts an elderly patient, mask pulled down from his face, looking into a blank tablet screen. He is frail, seated in a wheelchair, and notably alone, suggesting the isolation endured by many during the COVID-19 pandemic, relying on remote digital connections to approximate the irreplaceable reality of human presence. Borrowing from religious iconography, I stylized a Byzantian halo from the spiked proteins of the Coronavirus itself, meant to honor not only the sacred nature of the patient (one we may have been challenged to see among a season of scarce resources and triage) but also the reality that COVID-19 clearly looms over the current academic environment. This iconographic motif is further echoed by the photograph itself, which reveals that the X-ray view box is itself backlit as if by a candle, echoing one of the most important aspects of the academic medicine experience: that we must look again, for there is always more to see. Like an X-ray, which reveals the resolution of an effusion, a new pathology, or an anatomical variation that would otherwise remain unseen, the medical institution helps enlighten us to that which deserves further imaging, treatment, or healing. Academic medicine ideally reveals where we are progressing and also where we are failing to progress. It is a space in which we can rightly speak of being exposed, yes—but also potentially illuminated.2020: Single View