PINK SOAP
Pink Soap is a photographic typology of the common pink liquid hand soap found everywhere from gas stations to restaurants to hospitals, made all the more ubiquitous during the coronavirus pandemic.
Viewed together, these plastic bottles of pink liquid take on a re-contextualized significance, confronting the viewer with their jewel-like luminosity, sculptural form and uneasy, toxic persistence. Bearing names like “Sweetheart”, “Passion”, and “Utopia”, the reality is rather an antiseptic nightmare. In their totality, the liquids are neither calming nor soft, but aggressive—suggesting the collective dread of our years of compulsive hand washing, fear of contagion, and untimely death.
Brian Cassidy