Colleen Wolstenholme
Untitled pendant (Prozac)
2017

Name: Untitled pendant (Prozac)
Brand: Colleen Wolstenholme
Price: 250 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

I have been taking impressions of pills and creating a pill archive where pills are cast in silver and/or gold since 1995. At that time I was given pills as an answer to something that proved to be much more elusive than any pill might conquer. At the same time I knew many other women who had started taking these SSRI pills. Knowing about the symbolic history of jewellery and its foremeost position in the list of things "girls" supposedly want, caused me to be horrified by marketing that allows how one might with jewellery conquer a "girl". In response to this and as an echo of the ongoing subjugation based on gender a way to point out the depression and humiliation that comes from it; a psychotropic pill worn around the neck or wrist here stands as a symbol of defiance in the face of subjugation. But here I am also using jewellery as a vehicle for liberation for anybody because by wearing your medication as some have done it means it is no longer as big of a secret. Taking pills is still one of the most taboo subjects for humans who feel shame for being less than healthy. If we must augment ourselves somehow with pills we are vulnerable and everybody is terrified of that.

Creator:

Colleen Wolstenholme (1963, Canadian)

Creation Year:

2017

Medium:

Silver

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Montreal, CA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU4763970192

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Shop All Colleen Wolstenholme

Colleen Wolstenholme

Best known for the jewelry and figurative sculptures based on a range of pharmaceutical drugs that garnered her widespread notoriety in the late 1990s, prolific artist Colleen Wolstenholme has also created abstract drawings and other works over the years that continue to stimulate dialogue and attract attention.

Born in 1963 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Wolstenholme became interested in visual arts while studying fashion design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After earning her bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1986, she continued her studies and received her master’s degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1992, where she specialized in metal and jewelry arts.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Wolstenholme worked with a range of mediums such as jewelry, sculpture, digital collage, painting and embroidery to create art that served as social criticism. Beginning in the mid-1990s, she made oversized plaster-cast sculptures and silver or gold jewelry that took the form of antidepressant pills and capsules in order to address several issues, including the fact that drugs are prescribed at disproportionate rates to women versus men, that the healthcare industry is overly reliant on prescribing drugs, and that anyone in treatment and on a course of medication is generally made to feel less healthy than those who aren’t. Wolstenholme’s provocative work made headlines in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and Psychology Today.

Wolstenholme’s art has also seen her unpacking her interest in the human brain. This is demonstrated in such abstract sculptures as Deviant Grid, the “Matrix Index” series and Spatial Anomaly in which she depicts the brain’s neurons. In her “Hyperobjects” series, Wolstenholme also focuses on systems that “humans have little power over but control and constrain us.” These include figurative drawings and abstract drawings of wind patterns, titled with geographical coordinates.

Wolstenholme’s art is part of the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

On 1stDibs, find a range of Colleen Wolstenholme sculptures, drawings and watercolor paintings.