If you Love Believe in Juliet

Mixed media and found objects

There are some experiences that are too big for humans: pain, furious loneliness, death, beauty, and happiness. This series explores the potion that took the lives of Romeo and Juliet. The artwork displays jars that were found objects and are labelled with quotations from the play. It is unknown what they contain. The unsuspecting lovers trusted a jar with their lives. The contents were unknown, and it was foolhardy to consume it.

We all suffer a little death when we love someone; no one enters into love fearlessly. The French term for an orgasm is “Le petit mort.” Proper Elizabethan society frowned upon premarital intercourse, so was it the death of Romeo and Juliet, or was Shakespeare using this as play on words so he could share with his audience they had partaken in the unthinkable and gave themselves to each other? Do we die a little death when we give our bodies to another? Can we ever be the same after having given?

The ending to the play could be interpreted as a death, or as an orgasm, and the “little death”. The statement “ If you Love Believe in Juliet”, can be symbolic of the anguished teens giving up their lives for love. With Romeo and Juliet, the need of each other was equal, but in a mature relationship each person should question, “Is her need of me less than my need of her?”