Love Me

Curtis Kulig writes LOVE ME on walls. You’ve seen the photos—big letters on the side of a building somewhere you’ve never been, or maybe somewhere you have. Just those two words, over and over, in cities all over the world. It started as street art and became something larger, a movement, the kind of cultural thing that gets documented and discussed and eventually commercialized.

The work is direct in a way most art tries not to be. No metaphor hiding it, no irony putting distance between you and the feeling. Just someone asking out loud to be loved. There’s something about that directness that works—seeing vulnerability spelled out in letters big enough to read from across the street hits different than it should.

That’s what happens to things that feel true in public space—someone figures out how to monetize them. A brand does a campaign, limited editions, the whole apparatus. You can strip all that away though. The work is still what it was before anyone tried to sell it.

I think about the repetition of it—Kulig just writing the same thing again and again in different cities, different walls. Not elaborating, not explaining, just repeating the ask until someone listens. It’s either beautiful or completely desperate, maybe there’s no difference. Either way, it stays with you.