La Verbena Del Amor was a project conceived and developed with my friend Gabriel Barahona. I wanted to return to the magical city I'd fallen in love with, Valparaiso, Chile where I'd staged The Pale Blue Door in 2011. Initially we came up with the idea of a festival of love. I wanted to explore all things love entails from passion to sex, devastation to joy. We found an abandoned mansion, 5 floors, absolutely beautiful. It was a mess of course but a good sweep and some imagination and the house came alive.
I came up with a mad show, flew A Man To Pet over for a month. The whole house was explored, with a wailing wall, nude life models, peep shows, the eternal rowing couple, karaoke of sad songs, the bed of a thousand lovers. It was a multi sensory experience! My boyfriend Vincent Duraud filmed the whole thing from day one to close. It was amazing to capture the process of my work, from initial ideas, to finding all the 'bits' of the puzzle and on to building, lighting, bringing everything alive.
I'll always love that city, it has my heart somehow. It's like I could have built the whole thing.