Portraits from the front lines: COVID-inspired art exhibition featuring DFCM faculty

The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted many clinicians to look for ways to process the strangeness, fear and uncertainty of life on the front lines. For some, that meant integrating medical and creative practices for the first time.

Exposures: Early days on the front lines of the pandemic is a joint art exhibition with charcoal drawings by Dr. Megan Landes, Division Head of Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto’s Department of Family & Community Medicine (DFCM), and photographs by Dr. Brant Slomovic, faculty at U of T’s Department of Medicine, Division of Emergency Medicine, both emergency physicians at University Health Network (UHN).

“I have always been an artist but had been on a bit of a hiatus for the last five years,” says Dr. Landes. “When the pandemic hit, I started drawing again as an outlet for all the emotions I was experiencing at work: rage and exhaustion while still trying to be a strong, resolute warrior.”

Her first subjects were front-line emergency medicine colleagues – in full personal protective equipment (PPE) so that all their features are obscured, except for their eyes.

Three DFCM faculty members are included in the I Miss Your Beautiful Faces series: Dr. Sheryl Seidman, Dr. Cheryl Hunchak and DFCM’s former Emergency Medicine Division Head Dr. Eric Letovsky.

There is also a self-portrait diptych called Both/And #2. The pair of connected drawings contrasts Dr. Landes’ face with and without PPE.

The idea of “both/and” is an overarching theme.

“To me, it means what we are in our wholeness, a vulnerable and expressive wholeness, which is not always open to us in professional circles,” she says. “By engaging both the medical and the visual arts community, we wish to invite a conversation about how visual arts can harness ways of seeing, expressing – and ultimately, healing on the front lines.”

Similarly, photo-essayist Dr. Slomovic felt a need to document the pandemic, if not to make sense of it, then simply to record it.

“All my images were shot on my iPhone through a protective Ziploc bag — a hack to limit contamination and spread of the virus and to ease disinfection. In effect, the resulting images evoke the strangeness and visceral experiences of working in a time that was anything but normal.”

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Exposures is presented by UHN Foundation and supported by a U of T Medical Humanities Education Matching Funding Grant awarded in fall 2021. The exhibition will be open to the public from April 2-14, 2022, at the Bau-Xi Photo Gallery (350 Dundas St W, directly across the Art Gallery of Ontario) and online. All artwork is available for purchase, with proceeds going towards the UHN Foundation Emergency Department campaign.