Love Is... Red Flag

Love is Red Flag is an animated treatise in ten parts, working as a surreal pseudo-alchemical artifact. The project is made of independent symbols without an explicit logical connection, held together by "magical thinking." By joining unrelated elements, we create a structure that mimics a firm conceptual statement. Meaning is not found in the images themselves, it manifests as an emergent property of the system, just as feeling of love arises from the interaction of cells. The title of the series comes from the Turkish bubble gum of the same name (Love Is...), which was extremely popular in the post-Soviet space and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, where we both originally come from. This gum was remembered for its original inserts, created by the New Zealand artist Kim Casali. In them, simple drawings of two partners described various situations that the couple experienced in their relationship, and each of these stories began with the words "Love Is...". In modern society, relationship patterns that once seemed acceptable now often reveal negative traits, commonly referred to as red flags. At the same time, the protection of personal space, the desire for personal comfort, and independence pushes people away from the intimacy that is commonly called love. That is, love in the form it existed before modern times is already becoming a red flag itself, presenting a paradox that we want to study.