love exhibition | ninavanstyrum

LETS TALK ABOUT LOVE

an experiential exhibition

CLIENT: - || NEW YORK, NY || INSTALLATION & PRODUCTION DESIGN

2018

[ Expertise: concept development, translation from concept to design,

PR writing, production on site ]

Location

Con Artist Collective

119 Ludlow St

New York, NY 10002

Exhibition days

Oct 26 – 28, 2018

LOVE...

Our society is constructed upon an assortment of shared and disputed views of love; therefore daily life may be defined by love or, conversely, by its absence. Misunderstanding, pressure, and other negative emotional consequences may be associated with love because individuals interpret, approach and communicate love in their own way. LET’S TALK ABOUT LOVE proposes that love is an inherent right among humans regardless of one’s culture, race, gender or age.

We invited visitors to interact and explore through various metaphors the diversity of love-based relationships and emotional connections within individuals threw four activities representing different types of experience, visitors are invited to immerse themselves into situations.

After visitors go through the whole experience, we hope they understand the core concept of the love exhibition: love should exist without prejudice.

Designer / Curators

Min Fu

Helena M. Brown

Xiao Xiao Guo

Zhongjia Jin

Nina van Styrum

Film credited to ORU production

Love is...

Love is a universal language understood by all. It’s a simple word, but there are various forms of love that exist in the world.

If you ask one thousand people, you will probably get one thousand different interpretations of love due to cultural differences and the environment they grew up in. Explore these different definitions of what love is by revealing the cards on the wall.

Loving look...

Everyone approaches and looks at love in different ways. These different approaches can sometimes lead or evolve into feelings of pressure or being misunderstood and can lead to controversy. Everyone should feel free to love who and how they want to, without feeling pressured, and this exhibition area focuses on providing a broader perspective on how people can feel and create more of an emotional connection and empathy through love shown in two different installations;

- the first part is an experience where visitors will feel pressure, by having a peek in the

mirrored box,

- and the eventually in the wooden box visitors can experience the feeling of perspective and empathy for letting everyone love in their own way, through expressing the love they want toward the pillows in the room.

Love Languages...

This area of the exhibition aims to convey the importance of empathy when it comes to understand that people give and receive love in different ways, and for that reason there are misunderstandings between family members, friends and couples. With 5 separate activities as examples of the difference ways we love, visitors will think of their loved ones to try to understand or relate to the way they give love or like to receive love, and perhaps by acknowledging they can improve their communication.

The five languages:

Words of affirmation: Visitors hunker down to go inside an individual suspended box where they will find headphones to hear different people saying loving phrases in different languages.

Quality time: 2 visitors enter a suspended box at the same time and will see a clock with one minute passing by, the box gives them privacy to spend time with each other.

Physical touch: Visitors hunker down to go inside an individual suspended box where they will see images of people demonstrating physical signs of love, kissing, hugging, holding hands etc.

Acts of service: Visitors see a cube full of cards that they can take with difference phrases of acts of service, for example “Good for a home cooked meal” or “Good for a week of helping with homework”

Give or receive gifts: Visitors see a cube full of flowers, they can take one and give it to someone they love or care about.

Love / Be Loved...

The last part of the exhibition is to share and receive love from strangers. This activity invites visitors to fill in the blank -

“I feel loved when________. “

The sheets allows you to write, draw or sketch why you feel you are loved. After having divulged your story, you can place in one of the envelopes on the window, and receive another letter, from a stranger, to see how they feel or think that they are loved. Together the letters of love will create a heart in the window.