Baltimore artist who tackles lupus in her paintings seeks a kidney donor

Three different versions of Alexandria Wingate appear in a trio of purple paintings the Baltimorean started while a fine art student at Morgan State University.

In one, she’s accessorized her Halloween costume with expressive pins after being diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disease that commonly causes joint inflammation and skin rashes, among other symptoms.

In another, she shows off a bruise on her arm that engulfs a wolf bite, a nod to the Latin origin of the disease’s name.

And in the third, finished this year after a residency in Cape Cod, her pose is modeled after a young Angela Davis, intended to convey Wingate’s tiredness of being told she’s being “strong” in her battle for her health. She said the painting was inspired by her father saying his daughter — rather than someone like Davis, bell hooks or Toni Morrison — is his superhero. So it’s fitting that she’s clad in a mask that looks like a purple butterfly, the symbol for lupus , to show that it’s a part of her identity.

“It was something that I felt like I could never talk about,” said Wingate, 25, who graduated from Morgan State last year and also goes by the creative alias Diosa Dria. “I never felt like this disorder was ever trying to uplift me. … I’ve always been ashamed of it because it never made me feel like a normal kid. … But as I got older, I couldn’t allow it to make me a victim anymore.”

More than a decade after being diagnosed with lupus, Wingate has been searching for a living kidney donor since her yearslong battle with lupus-induced kidney disease resulted in end-stage renal disease earlier this year, necessitating dialysis . Her call for a healthy candidate with Type O blood (O- preferred) is being spread via flyers posted around Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and on social media .

Growing up in Northeast Baltimore, Wingate began drawing with colorful pens when she was just 4 years old. It was during her senior year at Baltimore Design School, where she graduated in 2017, that she got into painting, a practice she said makes her feel “monumental.”

“I feel like I’m creating a legacy for myself,” she said. “Not only for myself but for my family and for other little girls” who have ever felt like they couldn’t pursue an art career.

Her journey with lupus also started when she was young. Before being diagnosed at age 11, Wingate recalled always feeling tired. Sores in her mouth made it painful to eat, and she was losing weight, she said. She also presented with a “butterfly” rash across her face, a common feature of lupus.

Eventually, Wingate got her diagnosis at The Johns Hopkins Hospital where she continues to receive care.

Her rheumatologist, Dr. Andrea Fava, is a physician-scientist in the Division of Rheumatology at Johns Hopkins and the director of lupus translational research. He said that lupus usually comes in flares and ranges in severity and the presentation of symptoms, which can include chest pain when breathing deeply and “profound fatigue.”

“I don’t have two lupus patients who are the same,” he said.

It’s rare to be able to tell the exact cause of a patient’s case, though Fava said genetics and environmental factors both play a part. Worldwide, at least 5 million people have a form of lupus , according to the Lupus Foundation of America.

It’s more prevalent in people of non-European ancestry, Fava said, and women are nine times more likely than men to have lupus. Though historically a cure hasn’t existed, he said a new treatment borrowed from oncology is offering hope.

Lupus can cause damage in any organ in the body where there’s inflammation, though kidney involvement is the most common severe manifestation among the internal organs, Fava said. Lupus nephritis, a type of kidney disease caused by lupus, is also more common in patients of non-European ancestry.

“Every time you have a bout or a flare of inflammation in the kidney, some of the kidney becomes permanently lost,” Fava said.

Wingate, who was diagnosed with lupus nephritis in 2018, said her management of lupus involves medication, blood labs and talk therapy. She also started dialysis in April after acute kidney damage led to end-stage renal disease, and said she’ll have to continue it for the rest of her life until she finds a donor for a kidney transplant.

Fava said that the majority of patients with lupus nephritis don’t feel different than normal when they’re diagnosed and that the condition requires more aggressive treatment than for symptoms like mild joint pain.

If someone with lupus nephritis gets to the point of needing a kidney transplant, it’s unlikely lupus nephritis will return in the transplanted kidney, Fava added.

Wingate said she’s close to making it onto a transplant waiting list and that a transplant — from a living or deceased donor — would make her feel more confident going back to school for an MFA. She’s already started looking into programs.

“The honesty and the growth in the work” that Wingate creates stands out to her mentor Eric Briscoe, coordinator of the Visual Arts Program at Morgan State. “I’ve seen her experiment,” he added.

Briscoe taught Wingate in a few of his classes, including the one in which she painted the first two of her purple self portraits, after catching COVID-19 landed her in the hospital and triggered a lupus flare.

From his point of view, the paintings prompt questions rather than giving everything away.

“You don’t have to hit people in the mouth with your concept. You don’t have to put everything in a single painting,” he said. “So we separated out what her concerns were about certain things. And it actually informed me quite a bit about lupus in particular.”

“I definitely love the progress of the piece, the connection between them,” he added. “They’re changing; they’re evolving.”

Talking about her love of painting self portraits, Wingate recalled insight she gleaned from Briscoe: The subject you know the best is yourself.

“Deep down, I felt like this needs to come out. This story needs to be told … just for the sake of representation,” she said. “I’m rewriting my own story and my own perspective.”