Sexpectations: Messy Modern Love

Artist Philippa Found’s Lockdown Love Stories project emerged during the early days of the pandemic. Through anonymous submissions, people shared their unfiltered stories. From exes to being single, hookups to breakups, dating, situationships, friendships, and relationships, these aren’t love stories; they’re stories about love.

Beyond lockdown, the project thrived, collecting over 1,500 stories. Philippa’s book, It’s Complicated, showcases over 250 curated pieces, peeling back the layers of modern relationships. Each story offers a glimpse into others’ lives, cultivating empathy and reminding us of our shared humanity. By reading these experiences, we learn to understand and embrace ourselves better – our desires (or lack of) and those burning, suffocating, uncomfortable feelings.

It’s Complicated is a mosaic of human connections in all their shades – from breaking up to making out, quiet contentment to agonising loneliness, sexting to ghosting, friendships to ‘fuckboys’, pregnancy loss to profound fulfilment.

Philippa Found is a feminist storyteller. Believing the personal is political, she is an artist, writer, and curator based in London. Her work spans performance, text, participatory art, public interventions, video, and installation, using storytelling as a radical act to counter the shame silencing that oppresses women’s hidden realities, from desire and relationships to motherhood and the body.

She is the creator of lockdownlovestories.com (May 2020 – ongoing), a participatory art project that allowed the public to anonymously submit their true stories about how lockdown impacted their relationships. The artwork, which includes over 1,500 true stories, was awarded a London Community Story Grant by the GLA and Mayor of London, to gather insights for post-pandemic mental health policy.