Image: Brand Identity design for one of the oldest Danish circus families by Copenhagen-based designer, Ivana Colic.

Oscar Wilde used to say: “keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.“. Love can however be more complex than that, as it is one of the most thrilling, intense and yet frightening feelings you can experience. Sometimes, it can even turn into a way to escape from your own chaotic and paralyzing thoughts and emotions.

For Human Hotel host Ivana, the topic is even more intricate than that: “To answer the question if people search for love to escape themselves, I suppose that one must first define what love is? Can love be divided into the sacred and the profane? The human and divine, or is there only one love? Is love a sentiment or is it an emotion? Is it pleasure and desire? Is the perception of love different in my culture than it is in yours? Love is such a profound and tricky concept, so individual for each one of us.”

Ivana with brand design work for Alto Palermo. Photo: Ivana Colic

“Through our lives, we are blindly searching for something that`s so hard to define because it doesn’t exist as one thing. I believe that our perception of love is polluted by society’s norms and fairytales of one and only. The one who is gonna complete us until death do us part. I think as long as we have the idea that we are not whole just by being alone, we are somehow escaping ourselves while searching for an illusory goal. A sense of wholeness can and must be found within ourselves, not within another.” – she explains.

For Ivana love seems to have something to do with personal identity and fully embracing who we are before being able to donate that fullness to another human being.

Image: Poster design for Familie Cirkus Skole by Ivana Colic.

Developing an identity is actually an important part of Ivana’s work. She has participated in many projects and events which aimed at stimulating self-expression, curiosity and the development of a distinctive identity. Among those projects, the Color BA Street Art Festival in Buenos Aires, a collective declaration of love to the Argentinian city expressed through art. During the festival, more than 30 local and international artists participated to turn their individuality into a work of art that gives voice to their love for the city and Ivana was part of the production and idea developing team! 

Find out more on the Color BA festival and Ivana’s contribution.

Ivana at the Color BA festival in Buenos Aires. Photo: Ivana Colic