Torches of freedom
2026, QR codes in Almada
The LED pharmacy cross, in all its crazed aesthetics, is a uniquely southern European phenomenon. It is an icon of the urban scenography. The displayed text on the pharmacy cross is manipulated. The text shows old tobacco slogans from the 20th century.
• You are welcome
• What a feeling!
• Wherever particular people congregate
• You’ve come a long way for this, baby
• Alive with pleasure
• So round, so firm, so fully packed, so free
• They respect your throat.
• O que dá Kilómetros de prazer
The slogans become phallic in nature. The line between cigarettes, consumption, pharmaceuticals and sex becomes blurred and almost interchangeable. Subverting these relations is central to the work. Torches of freedom refers to the 1929 campaign to make cigarettes socially acceptable through the targeting of suffragettes. The cigarette was framed as a status of male (sexual) power and campaign was meant to subvert that by becoming torches of freedom. The pharmacy crosses themselves also become perverse torches of freedom.