Damien Hirst
Memories Lost, Fragments of Paradise, 2003
Damien Hirst (1965)
Memories Lost, Fragments of Paradise, 2003
Stainless steel and glass cabinet with pills
182.9 x 275.6 x 10.2 cm

One of the recurrent themes in Damien Hirst’s sculptures is the controversial dialogue between art, science, and faith, in this case, in the power of pharmaceuticals. Memories Lost, Fragments of Paradise presents a series of perfectly round pills that are endlessly reproduced in the mirror of a sterile cabinet reminiscent of hospitals. The artist has commented that “drug companies make a lot of money, and we’re buying what they’re selling in bulk, even though it’s not quite doing what it says on the packet […] It’s our bodies that are beginning to feel like merchandise.” Hirst’s displays of pills seem to hold the promise of oblivion: the depths of the echoing medicines offer to obliterate memory and cure one’s ills. Hirst considers the role of prescription drugs and how they are presented as consumer products, as an alluring path to the kind of happiness and bliss only attainable in paradise.

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS / SOMAAP / México/ 2020.