Placebo
10 ¼ “ x 6 ¼” x 2 ¾” plaster, sugar, vellum, plastic and metal tray (2025)
Monochromatic colored pill bottles casted in plaster. Medication for the emotions love, happiness and sadness. An interactive display where participants can crack open edible sugar pills like fortune cookies: to ingest ideas, thoughts, and feelings through reading poems, jokes, and negative thoughts printed on sugar paper to evoke their respective emotions.
Love
The power or words
Poems or song lyrics
Happiness
Laughter is the best medicine
Jokes
Sadness
Empathy
Answers to what does that negative voice in your head tell you?
Love
Cause we got this thing that I can't describe / Like I fell for you in another life
Love Like That - Philip Philip
You did this/Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped/into fire.”
The Kiss - Anne Sexton
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side/ Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride
Annabel Lee - Edgar Allen Poe
I spilt the dew /But took the morn, /I chose this single star
Emily Dickinson
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart/i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
E.E. Cummings
but it's more that when you say it back, lights/out, a cold wind through curtains, for maybe/the first time in my life, I believe it.
Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance - Ada Limon
again and again the two of us walk out together/under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again/among the flowers, and look up into the sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Don’t leave now that you’re here—/Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
Before You Came - Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Here,/it’s all yours, now—/but you’ll have/to take me,/too.
Heart to Heart - Rita Dove
I guess that’s how it happened/struck by an arrow/ left to wither and die/ in this feeling.
Jasmine C.D.
All and all/This much is true /You have me/ And I have you
And I Have You - Nikki Giovanni
Happiness
What do you call a fly without wings?
A walk.
Two fish are in a tank. One asks…
How do you drive this thing!
Why can’t you give Elsa a balloon?
She’ll let it go.
R.I.P. to boiling water
You’ll be mist
What’s brown and sticky?
A stick
What do you call a patronizing bear?
A pan-duh.
This is my step-ladder…
I never knew my real ladder.
Two sheep walk into a…
Baaaa
I invented a new word!
“Plagiarism!”
What do you call a criminal landing an airplane?
Condescending
Sadness
“You are not enough”
“No one understands”
“I’m so tired”
“I’m bad at basketball”
“You look fat right now”
“I hope I don’t lose my job”
“I’m undeserving of good things”
“If only I did _____ then maybe it would've worked out.”
“I’m not doing enough”
“I’m not doing the right thing for myself”
