For this particular essay, we will be discussing Star Smart’s experimental photography series referred to as The Flowers: Overcoming & Healing. These photographs were taken with a cell phone and digitally altered with an obsolete phone application which no longer exists. The series depicts sets of piles of mediation pills formed into a circle with their colors altered to appear hallucinogenic, full of bright neon tones. The other part of the series of the Healing contains smashed pills which are then smeared upon a surface.
These photographs convey both the joy and frustration of completing chemo therapy for her previous bout of cancer. The toll of suffering from both the cancer and treatment becomes conveyed towards the pills behaving as a symbol of sickness. Assembled as a still life, the luminosity of the colors becomes more apparent as they play upon each other in segments which seem like forms of tetris. On the other hand, the smashed pills are meant to communicate a sense of destruction. A yearning to destroy the cancer as well as to eradicate the past memories of suffering from the disease.
Interpretations of experiences in artworks such as these pill photographs convey how contemporary art can lead to deeper purpose beyond aesthetics or design principles. In fact, the aesthetically pleasing aspects of the photographs could be described as a hallucination, a distortion of the mind dealing with vast amounts of suffering. The minimalist tendencies in the smeared pills portrays a wabi-sabi element of an imperfection, or rather, an improvisation of destruction turned into art. Through lucid colors and central composition, the piles of pills communicate a oneness to both suffering and pleasure. A sense of completion and closure to a chapter full of frustrating pain and despair.
In terms of digital art and photography, the fact these photographs were taken with a phone camera and digitally altered with a primitive phone application reveals a heavily pixelated surface. These distortions and gradations of extreme saturation seem almost like digital renderings or even x-ray vision. What these photographs offer contemporary discourse is a transfer of experiences into conceptual two-dimensional imagery and reinterprets the purpose of still life beyond superficial means and expressions. In a way, these photographs could even be described as conceptual still life photography despite their minimalistic tendencies and simplicity. The variations in the photographs typically vary mostly just in color variation rather than form or arrangement, revealing a pop art inclination of repetition reminiscent of Andy Warhol.
The Flowers: Overcoming & Healing is a series which acts as a conduit of variety in Star Smart’s portfolio. These interdisciplinary works relate to her assemblage and mixed media works because those also deal with the trauma of encounters. When artists discover the freedom of releasing the tension of negative experiences through art, the results are an authentic expression of highlighting a deeper narrative to the struggles of the grander human story. Through light, color, and composition, these pill photographs are illumination into the conduits of metamorphosis of bodily transformation, from sickly into whole and complete.