Editor’s Note, April 14, 2025: Nyx Mir previously went by D. Mir, and a previous version of this piece used that first name. The article has updated Mir’s name.
With a multi-systemic disease as debilitating as Long COVID, it isn’t always easy to explain the constellations of symptoms we experience. Especially when they come, go, return, worsen, or are overshadowed by new, even more debilitating ones. Many neurological symptoms are more abstract, too, like derealization (feeling detached from your surroundings) and cognitive dysfunction. And what about the toll of these daily horrors? How do we explain the grief, sadness, and loss they bring, on top of our never-ending symptoms?
For artist and lighting designer Nyx Mir, drawing is the answer. In late 2023, the Oregon-based artist started the project “Illmarks” to conceptualize the sinister Long Covid symptoms they developed after a SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2022. A series of “affecting and relatable” body horror maps and symptom visualizations help show what the disease feels like to Mir.
“I’m noticing my skills as an artist grow as I better understand what’s happening in my body,” Mir said. The project of over a hundred drawings — so far — has been informed by conversations with others experiencing Long Covid and other infection-associated diseases.
Each “Illmark” portrays one symptom or emotion on a thick, bookmark-sized sheet of manilla paper printed with the ghostly silhouette of an androgynous human body. The paper comes from a Japanese stationery company typically used by fashion designers, Mir said. Artist Andrew Gifford described Mir’s style as a cross between medical notes and Japanese Kakemono-e, or, vertical art. The hue of the paper makes the series feel archival, as if someone had decorated the diagrams of a 100 year-old copy of Grey’s Anatomy with electric ink.
Research papers and articles about Long COVID are not always accessible to people with the disease, Mir said. The Illmarks website cites other art and data projects that helped show diseases including Italian designer Giorgia Lupi’s visual essay, “1,375 Days, My Life With Long Covid” and Tessa Burton’s graphic novel about myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), “Notes from a Sickbed.”
Energy permitting, Mir encourages other people with Long COVIDand related diseases to try processing their emotions and symptoms through art or other creative efforts. “I think it’s a really good way to try to get in touch with the heavy emotions and experiences that we’re all having.”
Below are 11 selections of Mir’s Illmarks. Find the rest on their website here.
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