Medicine as a metaphor
Recently I came across a very interesting and important project of modern Spanish artist Sarah
Landetta.
She released her series of works entitled “Medicine as a metaphor.” This project is
aimed at showing people different perspectives of the disease. Sarah tries to convey to the patients
that faith in healing along with medicines helps to heal. To this end, she paints beautiful birds on
the reverse side of used pharmaceutical carton packs, which symbolize a “captive”
patient wishing to fly away from the disease. Here’s how she describes her work: “The
project includes a collection of 120 medicine boxes, which were used by different patients to fight
their diseases. The reverse side of the package is illustrated by a wide classification of birds
from different families. Birds are the only animal that symbolizes freedom and only they can help
pass through the brush the freedom and reunion of earth and sky. Also, the bird is one of the
animals that lives in captivity. This comparison of the natural and the synthetic interprets the
patient as a captive animal, and the bird as his metaphor. By creating my collection of birds inside
pharmaceutical packaging, I kept my only desire: I will learn to be a bird in captivity. Birds want
to fly and this is what gives them the meaning of life. ”