The exhibition is born of a desire to explore the quest for happiness through the stories of drug consumers around the world: a young gay man in Tel Aviv who takes PrEP, prophylactic pills against HIV; a farmer in Niger who takes the powerful painkiller Tramadol to “cure” fatigue; a depressed Swiss man, in and out of a psychiatric institution, who takes antidepressants and anxiolytics; a teenager from Massachusetts who takes Adderall to treat her attention deficit disorder; a young Amerindian woman from the Peruvian Amazon who injects herself with contraceptives so that she does not become pregnant again while raising her four children alone; an Indian bodybuilder who consumes vast amounts of steroids and growth hormones to build a body that he considers ideal; an Italian gigolo who uses Viagra as an implement, a tool for his work; and, lastly, a French intellectual, suffering from pancreatic cancer, who decides to resort to assisted suicide in Switzerland and is therefore injected with Pentobarbital.
At La Ferme des Tilleuls, where it was first shown, it occupied the entire space, 300 m2, even sections not previously used for exhibitions. It consisted of prints of original and vernacular photographs that deal with pills, their consumers, their production and marketing. In addition to the framed photographs, it included lightboxes, TV screen installations, wallpaper of pharma advertising and social media postings, the actual portable pharmacy of a Haitian street vendor and an entire room covered in blisters from the ground up. The viewer exits the exhibition through a 10-minute video installation of original material on three screens. This installation constitutes a poetic but also philosophical immersion in the universe of medications and an illustration of the globalized duty of happiness.
Curation by François Hébel.
Produced and first presented at La Ferme des Tilleuls, Switzerland. 09/09/2021-16/01/2022
Visa Pour L’Image, Perpignan, France. 27/08/2022-11/09/2022
Freiraum für Fotografie, Berlin, Germany. May 2023
Kyotographie, Kyoto, Japan. Spring 2023