Pharma Infinity Dance

Overview

Chanika Svetvilas threaded her collection of prescription bottles with galvanized wire to create the shape of a large infinity loop sculpture. Created with an iPhone 8, she dances through the aisles of a CVS pharmacy with her Infinity sculpture to reflect on side effects, the intersections of treatment, access, and stigma as well as their contradictions. As an interdisciplinary artist, Chanika plays with scale to magnify and make visible the relationship between medical conditions, BigPharma, access, side effects and care. Her work developed based on her personal experiences as someone who has a diagnosis of bipolar and as a way to understand and translate meaning through the lens of disability justice and mad pride.