Beverly Fishman’s experiences with the medical system have deeply informed her work. Having faced chronic health challenges in her family and witnessed the AIDS crisis impacting friends and loved ones, she knows firsthand the consequences of medicalization and the social meanings assigned to illness and disability. Pill Spillreflects on medical interventions in human variation, exploring how medications and the healthcare industry are marketed and how they impact the lives of disabled people. She has remarked on her work’s relationship to the blurry boundaries between poison and cure—and whether there is such a thing as a cure. This work may resonate with many disabled individuals, who often navigate complex relationships with medicine and treatment. For different people with disabilities, the concept of a cure may appear alluring, doubtful, dangerous, or even disrespectful to their experience of disability—perhaps multiple of these at the same time.
Fishman’s art may prompt viewers to consider these tensions, emphasizing the personal and political dimensions of medicine in the lives of disabled people. She has commented that her artworks “are tied to problems like attention-deficit disorder, opioid addiction, anxiety, and depression. Their forms connect them to the social problems of today.” Consider how your own life and the lives of those around you are shaped by contemporary medicine and medicalization.
Beverly Fishman (American, born 1955), Pill Spill. Hand-blown glass, 2011. Small pill: diameter (at center) 2 3/16 in. (5.6 cm), length 6 3/8 in. (16.2 cm). Larger pill: diameter (at center) 3 9/16 in. (9 cm), length 10 3/8 in. (26.4 cm). Gift of the artist, 2012.11a–b. On view in the Wolfe Gallery Mezzanine (Gallery 2A).
Image Description: Two oblong, hand-blown glass sculptures in the shape of pill capsules are positioned almost perpendicular to each other. Each capsule is divided at its center, with each half a different color. The pill on the left is much smaller than its companion. Its left half has alternating, swirled stripes in opaque yellow and orange. Its other half is a translucent bright blue with a hint of green (cyan). The left half of the larger pill is a translucent minty turquoise; the right half is swirled with fine, closely spaced, opaque black and white lines.
