How Art Reflects Life with IBD

Whether you’re looking for comedic relief, introspection, or challenging ideas, artists who live with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis have produced work that can help you get there.

Chronic illnesses tend to be one big old drop in the bummer bucket. They come with a whole list of difficulties and burdens. But I’m a believer that art and other beautiful things can come from our struggles.

Here are four ways that life with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has inspired various forms of art.

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Comedy

Who doesn’t love to make fun of their most embarrassing poop stories?! This clip recently went viral on TikTok.

In it, comedian Lili Michelle hilariously interacts with a member of her audience who, like her, also has Crohn’s. The attendee hadn’t sh*t his pants before?! Well then, he couldn’t possibly have Crohn’s!

Other comedians have also found their chronic illness to be great content for their standup gigs. Ian Goldstein says he noticed that other comedians got the most laughs when they shared personal material.

As such, he began to tell jokes inspired by his Crohn’s disease. He hopes that by sharing funny and relatable jokes about his autoimmune disease, he will help others feel less alone.

Writing

As a writer, I can attest to the comfort I can feel in taking control of my own story and sharing it in my own words.

I find it very cathartic to write about my experience with IBD and very freeing to explore how Crohn’s affects me in various aspects of life.

Writing about my Crohn’s has encouraged me to be more reflective about my experiences and more mindful about my life.

Living with a chronic illness will lead you to see the world differently. This essay talks about the benefits of having a chronic illness.

It was ultimately the author’s own illness that pushed him to write. “Writers,” he says “are natural self-dramatizers. They are looking for reasons to write.” Who’s to say that Crohn’s can’t be that catalyst?

Painting and visual art

Just as writers use their words to make sense of their IBD, visual artists are similarly able to explore their conditions through painting, sculpture, and more.

Artist Daniel Leighton creates art that represents his feelings about living with IBD. At 11, Leighton had a colectomy due to his ulcerative colitis.

A few years later, he received a Crohn’s diagnosis. Through his art, Leighton says he is able to transform everything he has gone through “into something deeply meaningful.”

Similarly, artist Nicola Medicoff explored her Crohn’s disease through a visual arts series. In it, she sculpted guts, and staged them in different settings — sometimes surrounding herself with them, and other times with food, while a photographer captured these images.

Her intent was to “convey a kind of reversal,” she said, “a strangling of the food which I felt was strangling me every time I attempted to eat.”

Through her photo series, Medicoff says that she has taken comfort in raising awareness for a condition that is misunderstood.

Film and television

A recent BBC mini-series, “Boiling Point,” has been celebrated for showcasing a character with Crohn’s disease. In the show, a character named Robyn tries to get through her day during a flare.

She initially hides her symptoms before confiding in a co-worker about her diagnosis. Viewers have praised the show for its representation of IBD.

Fun fact: The classic science fiction film “Alien” also has a Crohn’s connection, Dan O’Brannon, the screenwriter, was inspired to write the iconic chest-bursting scene because of his own painful experiences with Crohn’s.

After O’Brannon died in 2009 from complications of the disease, “The Register” reported that he had said, “The idea for the monster in ‘Alien’ originally came from a stomachache I had.”

The takeaway

I think we all can agree that IBD is not the most glamorous of conditions; it wreaks havoc on our lives, both physically and mentally.

But it also provides us with fuel for our artistic engines, juice for our creative batteries. It’s a springboard off which we can jump into our unique endeavors to better understand our condition and ourselves.