DAMIEN HIRST (B. 1965)

This silver bracelet incorporates seventeen silver charms replicating pills. Together with formaldehyde, butterflies and spots, pharmaceuticals are a prominent feature in the artist's vocabulary, originally explored in his Pill Cabinets series, and enrich Hirst's investigation on the relationship between humanity, life & death, art and science. He views medicine as a powerful contemporary faith, for which society believes drugs, despite their side-effects, will cure and preserve us.
A de facto object of vanitas, the bracelet is a wearable reminder that medicines can slacken but not stop our inevitable, human, mortal fate.