Pillness is a triptych of paintings on canvas with mixed media techniques.

The title combines the words "pill" and "illness". It reflects a kind of "medication-related disease", an addiction to medication that can appear when their use becomes excessive. French and German people, for instance, are said to be the largest users of medication in Europe.
It also refers to the opioid crisis that began in the U.S. in the 1990s and only intensified until the mid-2010s, causing the deaths of around 645,000 people. The communication (disinformation) campaign launched by the company that produced OxyContin downplayed the risks of addiction to doctors and engaged in extensive lobbying within the pharmaceutical industry in order to generate huge profits without regard for the health risks.
This is the other side of this "pill-related disease", a "disease of profit" that consists of establishing sales strategies at any cost, even if it leads to the death of thousands of people.

The proliferation of the blister packages across each painting suggests this overuse by tracing some paths that take over the pictorial space. A cartography of silvery lines emerges from the background whose dark and thick texture evokes tar and reminds us that, beyond the potential bodily pollution caused by drug abuse, the accumulation of packaging and the numerous chemical residues in wastewater create further environmental pollution, another kind of disease.

Black Gesso; acrylic paints (black, white, turquoise blue); various palette knives; a collage of aluminum medication blister packages; 3 cotton canvases (100x50 cm x 3).

Clara Maïda, April 2023