PHARMÆSTHETIC is a forthcoming immersive installation occupying an abandoned pharmacy - one of thousands of vacant storefronts left behind as medication sales migrate online. Supported by a Creative Capital Award, the project brings together pharmaceutical-infused pointillist paintings, cast plastic sculptures, found objects, and heavily altered drug commercial montages to examine the entangled histories of medication, marketing, and the body. Organized by color and pharmaceutical class, it takes its conceptual bearings from the pharmakon - the Greek term meaning simultaneously cure, poison, and paint - and moves through that ambivalence section by section, from antidepressants and masculinity marketing in blue to opioids in white, tracing how pharmaceutical culture aestheticizes and obscures the molecules it sells.

The installation does not position pharmaceuticals as simply beneficial or harmful, but as fundamentally dual in nature: many drugs from aspirin to antibiotics to hormones to opioids can have wildly different effects and implications, the difference often a matter of dosage and context. Works incorporating abortion pills and gender-affirming medications address contemporary assaults on bodily autonomy alongside the broader pharmaco-political landscape. Visitors will move through the space accompanied by staff in custom lab coats and leave with a folded package-insert essay elaborating the research - historical, philosophical, aesthetic - that underlies the work.