Double Happiness

Double happiness is in part an investigation into the world’s growing dependence on medication as a means towards psychiatric health.  The psycho-pharmaceutical industry broadened its reach to include treatment of mild disorders through prescription medication without psychological co-treatment nor placing restrictions on usage, thus creating a society in which individuals are medicated for unregulated and indefinite periods of time rather than encouraged to make the necessary adjustments in order to deal with fluctuating stress in their lives.  This institutionalized clinical approach is disturbing in its disregard of individuality as well as in its commerce-driven nature.

Motivated by financial gain, the pharmaceutical industry has resorted to the same marketing strategies as purveyors of more conventional consumer items.  Through television and print media, the industry has created both a false sense of normalcy in the consumption of and an increasingly frantic demand for prescription psychiatric medication.  Pharmaceutical advertisements exploit people’s emotions in the way they frame disease by attaching overly optimistic images to prescription drug therapy, patients can be led to doubt recommendations of exercise, healthy diet, stress management, and other preventative measures.  These cheaper, safer, and more effective health measures are unfortunately under represented in the world of advertising.

So convincing are these ads in promoting the attainment of happiness through medication that the issue of self-diagnosis presents itself in an alarming fashion.  Increasing numbers of individuals deceived by such promotion now view unthreatening signs of discomfort or poor health as symptomatic of medical conditions that may not exist, thus promoting needless drug consumption and encouraging the over-reliance on drugs to replace healthy life style habits.  Coerced and trusting patients demand of their doctors drug treatments based on the perpetuated misinformation, establishing a society of the self-medicated as well as the self-diagnosed.

What one needs to ask oneself is “Why?” Why does society demand our individual and collective compliance to be “Happy”? What does being happy actually mean, what forces are behind the definitions, and what are the implications involved in such coercion. Central to this body of work is an intention to consider and converse on these themes.

The paintings are composed of tinted plaster replicas of pills gathered from individuals within my immediate community, epoxy resin, polymer paint, and ink.