PHARMÆSTHETIC: Plato’s Pharmacy, Duchamp’s Dispensary, Preciado’s Prescriptions

Across America, physical pharmacies are closing despite rising pharmaceutical use, leaving communities without local healthcare access and dotting neighborhoods with vacant retail spaces. As medication sales shift online, chain and independent stores struggle. I propose transforming one such abandoned pharmacy into an immersive, monthlong art installation exploring our complex relationship with drugs. The installation embodies pharmaceuticals’ inherent duality to heal or kill, reflected in their etymological root, “pharmakon,” which simultaneously means cure, poison, and paint. Visitors will enter through the standard automatic sliding glass doors into a transformed space organized by color and pharmaceutical class. Custom-printed wallpaper with pill-shaped patterns will cover the walls, providing a foundation for my signature pharmaceutical pointillist paintings – works in which colorful dots of paint are mixed with crushed medications, creating molecularly infused surfaces that arrest these substances on their journey toward consumption.

Paintings will range in size from massive to intimate and draw on imagery from pharmaceutical and drugstore advertising. A series of sculptures, including plastic-cast pharmaceutical objects such as syringes, vials, and pill blister packs; biomorphic, expanding foam abstract compositions; and appropriated pharmaceutical promotional “swag,” will populate abandoned shelves and wall fixtures. Frenetic, highly altered montages of pharmaceutical commercials will play on screens mounted throughout the space, with larger projections in designated areas. All of these items will be combined in each “pilled” section of the store, focusing on an interconnected color and related set of medications. For instance, the “bluepilled” zone features works in various shades, from cerulean to teal, emphasizing antidepressant medications and drugs marketed to men. Paintings using source images from Zoloft and Cymbalta ads frame sculptures of Viagra promotional clocks and plastic cast vials of testosterone. Melancholic music soundtracks videos with deconstructed antidepressant ads. The “pinkpilled” section addresses women’s health and incorporates images of stereotypical femininity alongside pink marketing materials that engage with the current politics of gender in America as seen through a pharmaceutical lens. The “whitepilled” section examines opioids, including OxyContin and fentanyl, juxtaposing the multiple layers of whiteness with the crisis these medications have generated.

The installation invites visitors to engage with their personal experiences: health issues, addiction, insurance struggles, and memories associated with medications. Works incorporating abortion pills and gender-affirming medications confront contemporary challenges to bodily autonomy. The installation showcases the full spectrum of pharmaceuticals, from life-saving vaccines to potentially devastating opioids, from nootropics to psychedelics. Staff “greeters” wearing custom lab coats will engage with visitors, answer questions about the exhibition, and distribute a free handout. The handout, printed in the style of the folded insert in many pharmaceutical packages, will contain an essay written by me that elaborates upon my research and explorations, aesthetic, historical, and philosophical – a keepsake that extends the immersive experience beyond the visit. The overall experience juxtaposes visual pleasure with disorienting imagery. PHARMÆSTHETIC will transform a site of abandoned care and commerce into a space for reflection, inviting us to examine our deeply personal and increasingly complicated relationship with the substances that simultaneously amplify, sustain, and endanger us.