Love at the Stroke of Art

An artwork. A specific time. A stranger waiting for you. Art as a bridge for encounters written by chance and courage.

Love at the Stroke of Art (Frio na Barriga com Obra & Hora Marcada) was a participatory art experience commissioned for the MECA Inhotim Festival 2022, held at Instituto Inhotim — one of the world’s largest and most influential open-air contemporary art museums. The experience invited participants to embrace spontaneity and trust: two individuals — complete strangers — were each assigned a specific time and location to meet in front of a particular artwork. It was a double blind date: with an artwork, and with someone else. To participate, all that was needed was the desire to be taken up by surprise.

Love at the Stroke of Art offered a space for vulnerability, presence, and trust — inviting participants to say yes to uncertainty, while re-encountering art, nature, and strangers through a renewed, embodied lens. Works by artists including Cildo Meireles, Yayoi Kusama, Olafur Eliasson, Tunga, and Adriana Varejão became portals, transforming chance encounters into living performances. To engage with the experience, participants approached two "Women in Red" — inspired by mythological figures like Lilith and the Lady in Red — who wandered the museum gardens, inviting visitors to join a guided encounter with a stranger. Participants were offered a small ritual: to open their hearts to the unknown. Each participant received a hand-drawn heart marked on their palm and a card indicating a specific artwork, a scheduled time, and a personalized reflective question inspired by the essence of that chosen piece. When the time came and both strangers were in the vicinity of the work, they would find each other by their heart-marked hands. Then, a short ritual of connection would begin. Each encounter started with a moment of mutual presence while gazing into each other’s eyes. Then, the question on the card was to be answered, followed by sharing a personal reflection and a memory. The work explored the emotional landscape between desire and randomness, control and surrender, expectation and surprise. By relinquishing control over the pairing process, the artist embraced unpredictability as a creative force — proposing an experience where neither she nor the participants could foresee the outcome.