PORTRAITS OF RESILIENCE | Stephanie Francalancia
“ ‘Portraits of Resilience: Witnessing Burn Survivors’ Recovery Experiences in Nepal’ represents my belief that portraits, alongside text, can engagingly showcase essential aspects of one's persona. After hosting interviews with survivors of severe burn injuries in Kathmandu, Nepal, I created this series to depict the fundamental, raw emotions portrayed by the interviewees. Meant to be a set, these illustrations with their corresponding interview texts are the beginning of a compiled booklet, which lives at hospitals in Nepal so other survivors of similar injuries can see these stories—evoking a sense of community within the pages and between the digital brushstrokes.”
Stephanie Francalancia is a medical illustrator and medical student at Brown University Alpert Medical School. She has a deep-rooted interest in incorporating patient narratives into their health care to better meet their goals, reinforced when she received her M.S. in narrative medicine from Columbia University in 2022. She also holds a B.A. in fine arts from the University of Michigan, which established much of her digital media practice. She envisions continuing to braid visual art, patient narratives and clinical care together in her future medical practice.