Health, Illness, and Community: The Art of Pato Hebert at JMU
School of Art Design and Art History
SUMMARY: Pato Hebert, an artist, educator, and community organizer who teaches at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, spent three weeks at JMU in a residency that brought together an exhibition, community art collaborations, and conversations about health, illness, and collective care.
Residency: August 24-September 12, 2026
Sick Days: An Exhibition at Duke Gallery
September 8-October 9, 2026
Pato Hebert, an artist, educator, and community organizer who teaches at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, spent three weeks at JMU in a residency that brought together an exhibition, community art collaborations, and conversations about health, illness, and collective care.
Graduate Director and Professor Corinne Diop and the Studio Art faculty brought this ambitious art and health-focused project to life with support from a College of Visual and Performing Arts Cultural Connections Residency Project Award.
The residency featured a panel discussion on collective wellness, an artist talk, participatory silkscreening of Hebert's word pairs onto T-shirts by Professor Brett Taylor and his students, numerous class visits, and a cyanotype workshop with Brain Injury Connections participants. Additionally, the Dorothy Liskey Wampler Professorship of Art Lecture, "Collective Wellness," highlighted Hebert's international art-and-health initiatives.
At the center of the project was Sick Days, Hebert's large-scale installation exploring how Long COVID reshapes language, identity, and everyday life. Working closely with graduate students, gallery interns, and Interim Gallery Director Kevin Kwon, Hebert transformed Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art into an immersive environment.
Throughout Sick Days, these questions take physical form. A large wall of wooden words, crossed out and replaced, suggests how Long COVID can alter the ways a person speaks, writes, and thinks. "Art" becomes "are," placing being before making. "Lap" becomes "nap," reflecting the need to conserve energy. Throughout the installation, shifting language reveals how illness can transform everyday experience.
Burn marks on the words evoke the physical and cognitive toll of illness. Scorched gourds, some lined in gold, offer an image of transformation that holds loss and possibility together.
Sick Days invites reflection on experiences of illness that often remain unseen and on how care takes shape through patience, inclusion, and a willingness to make room for one another's changing needs.
