Who to Follow Friday…
By: Elizabeth Wright
Tags: Disability, Lifestyle, Art, Culture, Design

I came across Ananya Rao-Middleton on Instagram and instantly fell in love with her beautiful illustrations. Ananya is a 27-year-old freelance illustrator and chronic illness advocate who uses her work to express herself post-brain injury and as someone living with MS. Vivid, vibrant and explorative, Ananya’s illustrations explore the lived experiences of women in relation to chronic illness, racism and sexism, using colours inspired by nature to create wild, tropical backdrops to bring her work to life. She describes herself as a feminist illustrator and an advocate for people with invisible illnesses.

I needed to know more about her work and her lived experience and why she felt driven to use her art for activism...

Who is Ananya?

I am a disabled woman of colour with a lot to give to the world. I live my life full of ideas for things I want to talk about, injustices I want to raise, and illustrations I want to create. I’m passionate and empathetic, maybe sometimes to a fault, but have found lately that I need to be more respectful of my own energy and boundaries — particularly as someone living with a chronic illness.

I’m a fighter.

I grew up on the Isle of Wight from the age of 11, and endured years of bullying from my peers due to being different (I was a big girl, hairy because of my Indian heritage, and one of the only people of colour in the schools I went to). It took me years to process the trauma from that period of my life, but the experiences of growing up there has actually facilitated so much empathy, compassion and love in me — I want to create a better world for young hairy women of colour like me.

What is your disability/condition and how has it impacted your life?

I have two conditions, but it is difficult to know whether I still have one of them or not because sometimes the symptoms are pretty similar! In October 2018, I was involved in a go-karting accident that resulted in me getting post-concussion syndrome. I had really difficult symptoms for around a year (lots of vertigo, mood swings, headaches, insomnia, light sensitivity etc.), and had to take 6 months off work to recover. While investigating my concussion, my consultant found lesions in my brain from an MRI and in October 2019 I was diagnosed with Relapse-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis. It is likely that my underlying MS created the environment within which I could not recover quickly from my concussion. Thankfully, I only now experience PCS symptoms if I am really exhausted/stressed (but, who knows if these are now just MS symptoms!).

I am grateful that at the moment I do not experience many overt symptoms from either of my conditions, though there are several things with my MS that I am working on at the moment to improve my future quality of life. I am operating in a preventative mindset at the moment, with the determination of reversing some of the damage done to my brain through my existing lesions and creating better brain health for myself in the future.

Both conditions have taught me so much about the limits and strengths of my mind and body.

They have made me stronger and more resilient. I don’t feel scared for the future, I feel empowered by what I have learnt both through my own experiences and through the extensive research I have conducted about autoimmunity and brain injuries. I know myself so well, now. I am so grateful to my body and mind for carrying me through the past few years, in spite of how tough it has been.

You are a freelance illustrator, how did you get into illustration and why is it the perfect medium for you to express your lived experience?

Funnily enough, I got into my current illustration career thanks to my Post-Concussion Syndrome! Whilst taking time off work, and being unable to use my computer or phone, I decided to start painting. I had always been interested in art, but never pursued it formally. Not working gave me the time to focus on painting — which also helped me greatly with taking my mind off my concussion symptoms. I quickly found myself immersed in painting tropical backgrounds, women of colour and dinosaurs! In a way, I think that this was the beginning of me using illustration as a way to express my desires, hopes and dreams when my body wouldn’t allow me to do certain things.

It became an escape.

Now that I have formalized my illustration work by taking on clients and spending time on creating a portfolio, I feel that I’ve been able to really carve out a space for myself to use illustration as a way to highlight political issues and injustices I’m passionate about. Illustration is an incredibly powerful tool for communicating ideas, as it resonates with people in a way that other mediums can’t. It’s also a great way to talk about lived experiences that are hard to verbalise: it enables you to show the person your experience without needing to talk through it — I just love it when I get feedback from people about my work where they’re like ‘Yes, you’ve captured my experiences so well!’.

Your work is quite political with a focus on marginalised groups of people, we especially love the work you have done with BBC Body Positive, what drives you to use your illustration to raise awareness about these topics?

I try to create my work on the basis of Toni Morrison’s famous quote:

‘The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.’

We live in a time where everything has a political consequence. I think that illustrators are in a very privileged position where we can use our artwork to speak truth to injustice in a way that resonates with people and moves people to take action.

That’s the power of art, I think — it moves people.

I’ve lived through and witnessed so many different injustices in my life, from racism to inequality in women’s health, and I strongly believe in the importance of supporting grassroots efforts to mobilise in whichever way you can. Right now, I struggle to make it to marches because of my health (especially during the pandemic!), but what I can contribute is artwork that speaks to the injustices we are fighting against.

What advice would you give to young disabled women who may want to become illustrators?

I would definitely just say — go for it! Don’t feel like you have to hold yourself to a high standard of work, just let yourself experiment. Experimentation and playfulness is so important in illustration, and I think the pressure to find your style and produce work that is ‘instagram-worthy’ sometimes undermines that. Just remember that, like anything else, your illustrations will evolve the more you create art — and that’s the beauty of it! Also, don’t feel afraid to use what you create to speak truth to your experiences, I promise you that there will be people out there with whom your work will resonate. Your experiences are always valuable and important.