Tina La Porta | Artist Statement

Mental Illness is a moving target. There are good days and bad; periods of stability, and phases when life seems totally out of whack. Schizophrenia, the mental illness with which I was diagnosed in 2009, is an example of one such battle waged on fungible lines. It took several months -- of perceiving voices that weren't my own, thinking the wires in my eyeglasses were bugged, believing that my apartment's fire alarm was a surveillance camera as the voices 'told' me what I should and shouldn't do ("Go to the hospital now") -- before doctors arrived at an accurate diagnosis. Along the way, I went through a trial-and-error period of literally hundreds of prescriptions, from anti-depressants to anti-anxiety medications to sleep aids. Prior to my illness, I had an artistic practice of photography, installation, and new media, and often made work that centered around commonly held misperceptions of the body, and which challenged social taboos ("Documenting CHOICE," photographic documents of protests at abortion clinics of Roe v. Wade; "Total Screen," examining the image of hajibs and burkas worn by both men and women as seen thorough Western media in the weeks post 9-11). Hence this work, though its material practice has changed, is part of a continuous thread of inquiry into struggles (mostly waged on the body) that are hiding in plain view. The difference here is that I am, at great personal risk, putting myself on the line: in many ways, my current 'body' of work is inseparable from my own.

"Side Effects"
2008 to the present
Pills, acrylic paint, metallic flakes, resin on board

Medications which I have personally been prescribed, as well as over-the-counter pills easily purchased by consumers seeking self medication, are carefully arranged onto board. Earlier works were created during periods when I was not entirely stabilized. In a search for the proper (sleep aid, wakefulness aid, anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, pain reducer, et al) I experienced numerous side effects which my prescribing physicians often denied were occurring. This led me, once stabilized, to also include the vast panoply of over-the-counter pills sold to relieve various symptoms. My palette is influenced by the drugs' rainbow palettes themselves, as well as by drug company ad campaigns. The background of "Sweet Dreams" is inspired by the midnight blue used in Lunesta's web and television ad campaigns; the sparkling metallic flakes allude to the elusive promise of the drug's curative properties, despite the side effects which I have myself experienced -- weight gain, disorientation, anxiety-- that may result. The scattered placement often mimics the confused state of mind of consumers under their influence.

"Hand To Mouth"
2012 to the present
Pills, plaster, acrylic paint, metallic flakes, resin

Single hands -- casts of my own -- are rendered in plaster and covered with solid blue, gold, yellow, red, white, and metallic paint. Each, gently open in a cupping gesture, holds one or more pills that I have either been prescribed or have consumed. In works like "Medicine Ball" I cast both hands past the elbows, appending them so that they jut out towards the viewer from a vertical surface that has been intentionally cracked and patinated. The cupped hands, now joined, are overflowing with a rainbow assortment of pills. The referents -- and self referents -- here are many: I am putting the remedy into my own, cast, hands; those hands then offering them up to the viewer.

"Over the Counter"
2013 to the present
Photo-emulsion screen prints and mixed media on board

Serigraphic images of the exterior of pill boxes sold to average consumers without a prescription. The product packaging is reproduced in monochrome, creating a typology of self-medication consumer culture. Diet Pills, birth-control pills, and products targeted to women are featured.