Lisa Erdman’s career is a dynamic journey, defined by bold risk-taking and invention in the pursuit of what she has coined “artful medicine.”
Rather than adhering to a traditional career path, Lisa has carved out her own trajectory, pioneering roles that allow her to pursue her passions at the intersection of art, multimedia, corporate satire, dance, education, poetry, and medical research.
“I’m not a clinician, but I believe that what I’ve learned from different art forms is that art can create a powerful space for sharing stories and healing,” says Lisa, who most recently served as a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State College of Medicine. There, she facilitated core humanities courses for first-year medical students while pioneering research on arts-based methods in medical education, including performance, medical improvisation, and graphic medicine. An active member of Narrative Mindworks and the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative, Lisa recently started a new post as an adjunct professor at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, PA, since November, teaching Medical Humanities.
Lisa has traveled the globe from Madison, WI, to Portland, OR, to Vancouver, Canada, Troy, NY, Helsinki, Finland, Budapest, Beijing, China, and her current residency in Harrisburg, PA, Lisa has traversed the globe. She has woven a unique tableau of dance, theater and art-based approaches that bridge the gap between clinical practice and the human experience.
Born in the United States to a Dominican mother and a German-American father, Lisa’s work interrogates societal conventions, particularly around race, identity, and medicalization.
“I took a chance” is a phrase Lisa uses often when describing how she has forged her own path. In 2008, she sold everything and moved to Finland, seizing an opportunity “to explore new cultures and create new programs,” she says. “I don’t always know where the next step will be, but I follow where I’m drawn to experiences that allow me to use art and narrative medicine in new ways for the greater good of society.”
Her work was deeply inspired by Lewis Mehl-Madrona, a physician and pioneer in teaching about the transformative power of storytelling in healing. In his book Narrative Medicine: Healing the Mind through the Power of Story, he describes how personal narratives illuminate the healing process and impact our neurological, mental, and physical well-being.
“I was inspired by the idea that you can speak to your illness and find out what it wants, that you can rewrite the story as a path to healing,” says Lisa. “That began my search for how public performances can serve as a forum for narrative medicine, creating spaces in public for healing.”
Whether through her performances, art installation or academic work, Lisa continues to create new spaces for discourse about health and identity while pushing the boundaries of traditional medical practice. In doing so, she hopes to inspire others to rethink their own stories and, in turn, change their approach to well-being.
Lisa’s work in media arts, with a focus on bioethics, the commercialization of medicine, and public performance art, has garnered international recognition. Her research and artistic presentations have been showcased at conferences, exhibitions, and in scholarly publications worldwide.
Lights, Camera…
As a single mother to a sixth-grade son, Lisa has spent the last four years employing drawing, watercolor, and text in a series of 5" x 7" pieces, titled The Freedom Series. This series explores the emotional and domestic experiences of single parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As a single mother, I use this artwork to express unmet personal desires,” she says. “This visual process provides a meditative path to freedom and radical acceptance in the face of illness and isolation.”
Another performance, Examination, investigates the patient/doctor relationship. The performance examines how the act of a medical examination can feel both intimate and alienating for the patient. During the performance, Lisa and two randomly chosen audience members wear white lab coats and slowly approach people in the audience, silently inspecting their ears, eyes, heartbeat, and lungs. No stethoscopes or other instruments are used, other than the white lab coat. Examination has been presented at the MUU Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.
One of the central aspects of Lisa’s academic and professional career is her ability to bridge the gap between the creative and medical worlds. As a graphic designer for pharmaceutical advertising, Lisa was uniquely positioned to critique the very industry she worked in, using her expertise in performance art and design to create campaigns that pushed boundaries. One example was her work on a fictitious advertising campaign for an imaginary drug designed to help people learn Finnish. While this project might seem whimsical, it was, in fact, a deeply satirical intervention that questioned political biases, ethnic stereotypes, and perceptions of science. This project exemplified Lisa’s skill in using satire to expose the unseen forces that shape public beliefs and assumptions, forcing people to confront their unconscious biases and the ways in which they are influenced by media and corporate interests.
— Lisa Erdman
Other venues for her work include:
- The Kitchen Performance Space in New York City
- Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum
- The Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland
- the SIGGRAPH Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Boston
- The Houston International Film Festival
- the Cine Estudiantil Latino Film Festival in Ensenada, Mexico
Lisa has participated in residencies at the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, China, the Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest, and the Centre for Health Education Scholarship at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
Three College Degrees Later, Lisa is Still Designing Her Future
Academically, Lisa holds a Bachelor of Science in Dance, Interarts, and Technology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (graduating with distinction), and a Doctor of Arts from Aalto University, where her doctoral thesis received high honors.
In addition to her credentials, Lisa earned a certification in COVID-19 contact tracing from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her diverse professional journey includes a year-long instructional design contract at the University of Helsinki and research and lecturing roles at Aalto University.
At the core of Lisa’s work is a commitment to creating spaces for dialogue—spaces where people can reflect on their experiences, biases, and interactions with the world around them. Through her art, her research, and her teaching, she continues to push boundaries, encourage critical thinking, and foster a more empathetic and inclusive understanding of healthcare and identity.
“Whether it’s writing a poem or painting a watercolor, I believe art gives me, and all of us, a way to process life,” says Lisa. “The arts can be so healing—not just as a medical tool, but as a part of our everyday lives. I really love working with university and medical students to help them explore opportunities in the medical humanities. The question for them is how they too can turn it into a career. I like to think I play a small part in inspiring them.”
Narrative Mindworks Questionnaire
Who are your favorite writers?
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Oprah Winfrey, Doris Lessing, Pablo Neruda, Eckhart Tolle, Pema Chodron
Which living person do you most admire?
Greta Thunberg, environmental activist. I admire how she lives by her principles and moves forward despite opposition and personal challenges.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Giving birth to my son and raising him in Finland and in the U.S.
Describe yourself in six words.
Creative, intuitive, empathetic, thoughtful, courageous, curious
What is your definition of Narrative Medicine or Narrative Practice?
For me, at its core, Narrative Medicine is a practice of listening to and creating stories to holistically express and understand the illness experience of a person. I resonate with indigenous philosophy of narrative medicine, in which stories serve as the blueprint of our lives. As Lewis Mehl-Madrona explains, "unless we have a blueprint for how to get well and embrace the possibility of getting well, we can’t get better. Re-storying means we need to have a way to believe in getting better, and we have to have a story to guide us or we don’t bother to do anything."
