Sharone Lifschitz

At the end of a talk about her work, Lifschitz was approached by an audience member, artist Matteo Peretti, who persuaded her to take him along on her next journey. A few weeks later, he received a letter in the post with instructions. The rules of their engagement stipulated that they were to spend a day on the London Underground’s Circle Line, traveling alone in opposite directions while keeping a diary. They were permitted to stay for up to thirty minutes in any given station; but if they were to meet, they were not allowed to speak. During their travels, they observed their fellow passengers, kept their eyes peeled for each other, and exchanged text messages.

For CiLiLove, the artist translated her and Peretti’s experiences traveling the Circle Line into a large-scale print. The iconic graphic language of the Underground map is reworked to convey their respective journeys, which are plotted along a central timeline. The exact location of each can be pinpointed at any given time during the day, and we can read each participant’s account—“His” in blue and “Her” in red—as well as screen grabs from the text messages that they exchanged with each other. CiLiLove was first exhibited in 2002 as a digital print mounted on a wood table. It was reworked into an eight-meter-long metal light table, inspired by the aesthetics of old London Underground carriages.