Chanika Svetvilas
SIDE EFFECTS SERIES (STIGMA)
prescription bottle, gold painted nails, rubber doll hands, 2020, 3.25” x 3” x 2”
A melted prescription bottle has two small brown hands extending out on each side. In the front of the bottle, it is punctured by 21 gold colored nails.
SIDE EFFECTS SERIES (LOBOTOMIZED PAIR)
prescription bottles, resin teeth, synthetic hair, nails, mirror, 2020, 4” x 4” x 3”
Two prescription bottles. The one on the left bares resin teeth that jut out. Near the white cap are nails that puncture the bottle. Towards the bottom long hair emerges from a mouth like orifice that wraps around the second bottle. The bottle on the right also bares resin teeth, but instead of nails near the top a small square mirror cuts into the bottle.
SIDE EFFECTS SERIES (IN PLACE OF SUTURES)
prescription bottle, nails, 2020, 3.25” x 2” x 1.5”
Prescription bottle torn open to reveal a vertical gaping hole with 33 nails puncturing along the edges of its skin.
Artist statement:
My interdisciplinary practice focuses on the diversity of the lived experience of mental health difference, and the impact of the stigma,inequity of care access and discrimination. This body of work developed based on my personal experiences as someone who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a way to grasp and translate their meaning through the lens of disability justice and mad pride. I utilize an archive of medication guides, prescription bottles, historical and psychiatric resource materials, and medical texts that reflect mental health conditions and systemic and historical legacies to find strength in vulnerability.
I manipulate prescription bottles as markers of maintenance of my condition of bipolar disorder and its stigma to remake them into sculptures. Easily identified by their childproof caps and amber colored plastic, the bottles do not reflect the escalation of cost, inaccessibility, and side effects. I transform them as I play with the scale to magnify and make visible the embodiment of the condition and its contradictions. Side effects, torment of the condition and the spectrum of emotions are revealed through puncturing, melting, pulling, and embellishing the prescription bottles.
This is an extension of my continued interest to apply personal narrative as a way to share experiences to disrupt stereotypes, create safe spaces, and to reflect on neurodiversity, contemporary issues and an intersectional identity through installation, multimedia, video and performative actions and ultimately to make the invisible visible and animate the inanimate.