Born of pain, filled with power – a teenage girl’s art that confronts in order to heal

The 17-year-old US artist Panteha Abareshi struggles with sickle cell disease, a chronic pain condition that prevents her from exerting herself physically, and frequently involves severe anxiety and depression. Her emotionally raw and graphically vibrant art confronts the role of pain and vulnerability in her life, depicting unflinching and unapologetic ‘physical manifestations’ of her inner struggles that she ‘can’t quite verbalise’. Through her work, she aims to both increase the visibility of women of colour dealing with mental illness, and to fight against the notion that pain is something that can simply be thought away.