Is Love? Book

London, UK

2008

During my masters program I started working on a book based on a conversation with classmates, each of us from different countries; Poland, England, and the United States.

I would capture a random conversation in a day and then recreate it visually through different styles of typography. I recorded a conversation on an audio recorder, taken the words down on paper and organized the content.

The actual conversation was a misunderstanding about language. We started talking about the word ‘love’. My friend asked me if love was male or female. I, not fully understanding her inquiry, told her I thought it was female because women express love more openly than men. One classmate, a young male in his twenties, responded as though he had been hurt by love, going on about how women are angry and controlling…And on he went.

At one point we began talking about squirrels and if they were male or female. My friend asked me if a squirrel was a male or female and I said, “it is a squirrel, the squirrel”.

I then realized she wasn’t asking about a feeling of sorts, but a language question!

In some cultures, and languages, like French and Spanish, certain items are considered masculine or feminine, where in the English language there are not.

Nonetheless, the conversation was worth recreating and I was passionate about bringing it to life in a visual representation.

The title of the book is, ‘ Is a squirrel male or female?’. Or ‘Is Love?’”