Saying I Love You to Strangers (2024)
One of my favorite things Judit Navratil told me is that it took her a while to realize (English is not her first language) that when you say ‘nice to meet you,’ it is only for the first encounter. Why is it that we don’t continue to meet someone? I want to be met every time.
Initially, I wanted to say I love you to every person in the world. I calculated that even if I only spent a second saying this (and never slept), it would take hundreds of more years than I have in my lifetime. What if I don’t love everyone? Yeah. But what if I did? The assumption that fallible humans are unworthy of love, to me, is wrong. For me, that assumption slides too closely to the conceptual underpinnings behind the criminal justice system, uneven institutional power structures, and lack of access to healthcare and housing. What is the baseline through which we consider people? What would it mean to assume love?
Saying I Love You to Strangers is a performance piece at Root Division as part of Phygital Care, an exhibition curated by Judit Navratil that explores intangible care as a collective practice that moves between analog and digital spaces. Temporary tattoos will be available.
While I can't say I love you to every single person in the world, I hope there is a chain reaction that reaches everyone — a wave of care that ricochets and sweeps over everything.
