The Covid-19 pandemic is producing a cohort of survivors who will all experience both different forms of impairment, and different experiences of disablement. To explore how society deals with survivors of serious disease outbreaks, this research reviews artistic expressions of survivors of Polio, HIV and Ebola to understand their lived experience and the impact their work has had on society in general. Survivors of these catastrophic health events use art not only as therapy but also to reclaim visibility. The struggle, however, differs across different cultural contexts.
In Disability Studies, our understanding of Covid-19 must extend beyond its impact on those who are already impaired, to include the impact of the virus as an agent of disablement in its own right, and to be cognisant of the uneven nature of this impact.