Pharma Infinity Dance

In this video artwork, Chanika Svetvilas threaded her collection of prescription bottles with galvanized wire to create the shape of a large infinity loop sculpture. Created with an iPhone 8, she dances through the aisles of a CVS pharmacy with her Infinity sculpture to reflect on side effects, the intersections of treatment, access, and stigma as well as their contradictions. As an interdisciplinary artist, Chanika plays with scale to magnify and make visible the relationship between medical conditions, BigPharma, access, side effects and care. Her work developed based on her personal experiences as someone who has a diagnosis of bipolar and as a way to understand and translate meaning through the lens of disability justice and mad pride.

International Premiere

Artist Bio: Chanika Svetvilas is an interdisciplinary artist who utilizes narrative and lived experience as a way to create safe spaces, to disrupt stereotypes and to reflect on contemporary issues as a cultural worker. Past projects include: collecting objects and stories that reflected an immigrant history from surrounding New York City communities for a commissioned window installation at the Tenement Museum; stationing a handbuilt mobile immigration booth on the streets of Brooklyn to survey the needs of English language learners with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund; and disseminating immigrant rights information with the youth program, Leadership Through the Arts for the Queens Museum. At The Ohio State University, she interviewed faculty, staff and students who self-identified with disability to speak about accessibility issues and the disability community on campus. Svetvilas is also the co-founder of ThaiLinks, a collective that was based in New York City dedicated to increasing awareness about Thai issues and the Thai American community and co-founder of the biennial Thai Takes film festival, the first Thai film festival in New York State.

Additionally, she has presented her interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary installations at the annual College Art Association Conference, Society for Disability Studies Annual Conference, Pacific International Conference on Disability and Diversity and exhibited at the Denver International Airport, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, ABCNoRio, Brooklyn Public Library, Westbeth Gallery, Islip Art Museum, Asian Arts Initiative, Artworks, Plainsboro Library, 22 North Gallery, Gallery Aferro, and the Wexner Center for the Arts among other spaces and contexts. Her work is published in Studying Disability, Arts, and Culture, An Introduction by Petra Kuppers, Wordgathering, Rogue Agent, Hives, and Disability Studies Quarterly.

Svetvilas was born in Buffalo, NY and raised in Elmira, NY in the Southern Tier of New York State. After previously living in Brooklyn, NY, Columbus, OH, and Plainsboro, NJ, she currently resides in Princeton Junction, NJ. Her studio is located at historic Art Station in Hightstown, NJ.