Love is... Red Flag
Tanya Pioniker x Igor Tsvetkov
2024 / 2025
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. In our project, we seek healthy ways to establish strong emotional connections between partners in today's shifting reality.
The artworks are extremely personal and sensual as we are working not only as an artists’ duo, but also as life partners. It makes the whole concept even more sharp as in this situation two artistic egos strive not only to coexist together peacefully, but to create a joint project about their relations.
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 1990-s, 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...". We not only preserved this concept but also kept the original lettering - the font used on the inserts for the "Love is" phrase.
As artists who often work with themes of the magical, medieval, alchemy, and the transcendental, we also approached this project by creating a kind of alchemical narrative. Our ten artworks are built as a kind of symbolic sequence based on the ten flavors of this gum. These flavors, which are mostly fruit-based, and their combinations create a combination of elements that we use to explain a particular state of relationships between people in a couple. The sequence of the series, from 1 to 10 (from the chocolate flavor to cola + lemon), serves as an allegory for the development of healthy romantic relationships—healthy not only in terms of reason and comfort, but also in terms of emotional depth and mutual feelings.
Within our collaboration, we decided to combine graphic works on paper and hand-drawn animation techniques. Modern people live in physical world and digital space, so does our project, which simultaneously exists in two dimensions: offline (graphic works on paper) and online (digital animation).
We also turned to the aesthetics and tradition of botanical illustrations as well as medieval bestiaries: some aspects of the project are metaphorically reflected through the habits of animals, plants, insects and their interactions in nature.
Stage 1. Chocolate
The only flavor in the gum series consisting of a single element, symbolizing a state of loneliness. But since this is the beginning of a series about love, this state symbolizes the very illusion of complete loneliness, when a person, as it seems to him, finally finds balance with themself.
The motto of the part is 'Love is don’t give a shit about my face', which is a poetic translation of Yegor Letov's song "Мне насрать на моё лицо". His head is depicted as a dung ball being rolled by a sacred scarab beetle.
The artwork also depicts scenes from the life of a scout ant and an "ant mill". The scout ant is a member of the ant colony that has left the "ring" of routine in search of something more important. He is shown sitting at the very top in the beams of a flying saucer, being a loner who feels absolutely harmonious with themself, but at the same time feels pressure from "society" and from the complexity of his own nature. After all, unlike soldiers and workers, he possesses a fear of death (running away from the anteater's tongue instead of attacking) and a thirst for knowledge (shown running in ecstasy around chocolate ice cream). The "ant mill," surrounded by the tongues of an anteater and a pangolin, symbolizes the routine of life, which revolves around traditional concepts of procreation, represented by the queen ant in the center.
The inscription at the bottom, between the anteater and the pangolin, in Latin—"IVDICEMVS SIMVL" ("Let us judge together") - combines with "Love is..." to create an alternative caption. It signifies the condemnation of loneliness by a "society of high morals"—religious, traditional, scientific, and biological dogmas. A human being imagines these dogmas as monsters, demons and gods, and to the ants, they appear as the anteaters and pangolins that devour them.
Stage 2. Chocolate + Melon.
The main characters are not depicted in this work, neither together nor separately. They are perhaps present only in the form of a man and a woman, seated like the sun and the moon, holding red flags in their hands. This implies that the people have not yet met, but the situation already implies this meeting, as chocolate is no longer alone.
Besides the obvious metaphors—a beating heart pierced by a sparkler, and police sirens—the work depicts a scene from the life of wolves and hunters. The hunters trap the wolves by fencing them in with red flags. The wolves are afraid to run past them and die. But one of the wolves, following the path of the scout ant, leaps beyond the perimeter, attacking one of the hunters. This symbolizes the revolutionary nature of the situation—the moment when a loner decides to break the vicious cycle of loneliness with an emotional decision, risking their "life".
Stage 3. Strawberry + Banana Flavor.
Here, the physical, bodily stage of the relationship begins. The flavor is a classic, almost kitsch combination of "sexual" fruits (banana and strawberry), which immediately sets the tone.
The main characters here are the body and desire itself. The central figure is a naked torso in a prayer pose, placed within a Gothic arch, like an icon in a temple. This is the main paradox of the "pleasant punishment" - a mix of the sacred, the ritualistic (prayer, arch) and the carnal, the "sinful". Around this "icon" are symbols of unbridled lust and fertility: mating rabbits. They are the animalistic, biological, uncontrollable side of this 'punishment'.
The lower vignettes (circular inserts) reveal the theme of 'punishment' literally, through BDSM aesthetics: hands and feet bound by a red thread, a gag in the mouth. This is a stage where the boundaries of power, submission, and pleasure are explored. It is the "red flag" of obsession and loss of control, which becomes "pleasant" through mutual consent.