Love, Anything:
28 Expressions for 28 Luminous Years
A photographic exhibition and speaker series honoring Ryyan Chacra’s life, now through 6/26
The Fulginiti Gallery and Gossard Forum, Center for Bioethics and Humanities, CU Anschutz Medical Campus
Gallery Hours: Monday-Friday 11:30-5:00
NEXT SPEAKER EVENT
Lissa Soep
LOVE, LOSS AND THE LANGUAGE THAT LIVES ON, June 18 - 6:30 PM
Lissa Soep, PhD, is an award-winning writer, editor, producer, and scholar whose work across media explores the ways that we love and learn, lose and find one another through language, and how our words can both serve and betray us when we need them the most. Blending memoir and philosophy, her 2024 book, Other People’s Words, reveals the power of language to keep us in dialogue with the people we’re missing. She is a senior editor at Vox Media, editorial lead on Language Please, and founder of an audiobook experiment called Bonus Chapter. As Executive Producer at Youth Radio, Lissa's collaborations with emerging journalists advanced reforms in criminal justice and child welfare and appeared on NPR, the New York Times, Teen Vogue, and many other outlets. Her next project is a narrative nonfiction exploration of intrusive thoughts in minds and culture.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Ryyan Chacra was a remarkably gifted photographer who “focused on the surreal sightings of daily and nightly life.” Tragically, Ryyan struggled with OCD, a tormenting, under-diagnosed, and widely misunderstood brain disorder. It was difficult for Ryyan to express the extent of his suffering to his friends and family; in May 2024, he took his own life. He was just 28 years old.
Presented by the Ryyan Chacra Foundation in partnership with the CU Anschutz Department of Psychiatry OCD Program and the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, LOVE, ANYTHING features a series of Ryyan’s photos on brushed aluminum panels (his preferred medium) alongside excerpts from his journal entries. In total, the exhibition displays 28 works — one for each year of Ryyan’s life — with the goal of keeping his story alive and spreading awareness about the complexities of OCD.
ABOUT OUR Speaker series
OCD is a painful, complex, and varied brain disorder — one that can be crippling if not properly treated. In conjunction with the exhibition, Love, Anything presents a speaker series focused on the importance of reframing OCD as a brain disorder, not a mental illness or weakness, as well as understanding OCD as a prison and a distorted lens through which those who suffer from it view the world. The series offers a hopeful message about forging meaning after loss.
APRIL 10 OPENING
Opening Photos: Angel TranKeynote Speaker:
Rachel Davis
THE LENS OF OCD: THE BRILLIANCE AND THE BURDEN OF SEEING EVERYTHING, April 10
Rachel A. Davis, MD, DFAPA, is a Professor and Division Chair of Adult Psychiatry, Medical Director of OCD Program and interventional psychiatrist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She lives with OCD and depression and brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to her work. In her professional and personal life, she has seen how OCD shapes perception—intensifying meaning, responsibility, and doubt, while also influencing creativity and moral seriousness. In this talk, she reflects on what it means to experience the world through a different lens, and how understanding OCD from the inside can deepen compassion, reduce shame, and open space for more honest conversations about suffering and survival.
Dr. Rachel Davis - Presentation
Dr. Rachel Davis - Q & A
GUEST SpeakerS:
Moksha Patel
UNLOCKING OCD’S GRIP: MY JOURNEY TOWARD TAMING ANXIETY, May 4
Moksha Patel, MD, is an internal medicine physician specializing in hospital care and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is also a life-long OCD warrior, having dealt with the crippling disease since his early childhood. Moksha holds a unique position of having to deal with OCD from both sides of the divide – as MD and as patient. A journey that helped him realize that anxiety, OCD and related brain disorders are rooted in physiology. And that brain health can be greatly helped when the right insights and timely interventions can produce life-altering change. Moksha’s journey toward taming OCD staged two critical successes. First, being able to break his silence about OCD and become his own best advocate, and second, becoming one of 300 candidates nationwide to undergo Deep Brain Stimulation surgery - a potentially life-saving medical intervention that offers hope by charting pathways to better accommodate brain disorders. Today, Moksha hopes to share his journey and some of the lessons he learned along the way.
Dr. Moksha Patel - Presentation
Dr. Moksha Patel - Q & A