Side Effects May Include addresses the struggles of mental illness sufferers with a focus on medication. Staples sorted the thousands of pills, arranged them in patterns and photographed them. She then translated the photos into wallpaper, a quilt, upholstery, dresses, and drapes, to ultimately create an entire room with all surfaces covered in patterns of pills. The deceptively alluring and decorative display immerses the viewer in a cacophony of images that slowly and powerfully reveal the tremendous scope of the polypharmacy epidemic in this nation. In conjunction with Side Effects May Include, Staples created an inventory of each medication, carefully researching the individual and cumulative effects, which she published as a book entitled “An Inventory of One Person’s Medicine Cabinet.”

This exhibition is extremely timely and relevant. In the fall of 2016, the California Legislature signed into law SB 482, a bill requiring doctors to check the state’s narcotics database before they prescribe controlled substances for new patients. The bill is intended, in part, to help crack down on doctor shopping, when a patient obtains controlled substances from multiple providers without those providers knowing about other prescriptions. Public programming will directly address this issue and will include doctors, pharmacists, as well as advocates and opponents of SB 482. The ICA Lounge will be used as an education/resource space for all the exhibitions, and will include specific resources and information pertaining to the topic of polypharmacy.