Medicine and the Body

Piece Description:

Medicine is related directly to the body. This performance artwork sees the artist transform medicine packaging used in her daily medical regimen. Packaging designs of these medicine boxes convey concepts, sensibilities, and aesthetic consciousness of diverse cultural paradigms, the implications of which go so far as to include views on life and death. Through dissembling medicine boxes and appropriating their structure and design, she incorporates these new shapes into own performance artwork. Thus, she re-cognizes the influence of different traditional civilizations and modern technologies on human bodies and psyches. She then invites the audience to join in and experience the integration of abstract art into their own life along perceptual and rational levels.

Prepare a certain number of used medicine boxes from my medical regimen. Disassemble the medicine boxes of varied sizes and shapes, using the various shapes on the back of the medicine box to re-compose patterns, colors, and modeling characteristics onto the front side of the medicine box using watercolor markers. Reference can be made to pattern elements or written text found on other medicine boxes. The process can be improvised or orchestrated. During the action, interested audience members are invited to participate. The finished work is displayed on a wall or in a frame.

Performance Process:

The artist’s individual performance lasts about 30 minutes, and then audience members are invited to participate, for a total duration of 45minutes. Materials: markers, paper knives.