Anna Sergeeva

GM: You were commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to create a public art project, which resulted in love @ first line (2021 – Ongoing). What was the inspiration for this project and how did you construct it?

AS: When YBCA reached out, they proposed this idea of using the entire building exterior as a canvas, with an interactive component in the lobby. It was meant to align with the Center reopening after a long COVID lockdown. Upon visiting the space at that time, that downtown area of San Francisco was very bare, slightly apocalyptic in a sense. It felt like a lot of responsibility to do something of that scale that could acknowledge this context, while also trying to provide something of value to the community So that led to this idea –in general, I always think that the only point is love. Every song is a love song, because what else is there to sing about? I was in this coding class at Pratt, where I completed my master’s degree, and I wrote a Python script that pulled all the first lines of all the love poems from The Poetry Foundation’s website, which is the oldest continuously running poetry publication in the English language I then wrote another script that pulled these lines into groupings of 2 or 3 lines to become their own unique stanzas. I did this searching for the magic of synchronicity. I then collaborated with the YBCA team and a group of translators to pick and manifest these magical groupings in the four official languages of San Francisco, which are English, Tagalog, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese Characters (spoken as Cantonese or Mandarin). All of the groupings that are around the YBCA façade are all unique. It’s not like there is one [grouping] in English that was translated into the other three languages If it was in Tagalog or Chinese, it was just in those languages. [The project] was about making something accessible while also playing with the notion of inaccessibility, which feels to me to capture the complexity of love, of art – not everyone is going to understand the piece, and that’s fine.

GM: love @ first line also includes a postcard component, which was included in We Are Close In Distance, the group exhibition that my MA cohort and myself co-curated at USC Roski's Mateo Gallery last fall. Could you talk about that element of the project?

AS: Besides the exterior space, it was always a core component to have an interactive activity that people could do in the [YBCA] lobby A selection of the different texts that were on the façade were also printed on postcards People could write a message on them to anyone anywhere in the world, and YBCA would stamp and mail them out every week. [This was] totally in touch with the idea that a lot of us remain far from the people we love, and that person could also be yourself. I think there’s this element of tenderness and connection, [which also applies to] sharing your own words of love, in its emotional resonance That ties into your previous question of what my path was to becoming an artist. I think that everyone can be an artist when faced with these opportunities to interact with art, being a part of it.

GM: When you learned about the exhibition’s title and thematics, what did you think? How do you feel it fits into love @ first line?

AS: In talking to you specifically about this exhibition in its beginning stages, there was a focus on longing. [That’s what] really stayed in my mind, this idea of love as longing. (Continued)

Anna Sergeeva