The Italian street artist Drew.Lab_One lives in Berlin and has always been fascinated by calligraphy. Spurred on by this interest, she developed her very own letter style, her own form of “calligraffiti.” Drew.Lab_One’s complex and dynamic letter structures combine several traditions: those of Arabic, Italian, and Sumerian calligraphy, as well as Cyrillic and Gothic script traditions. The artfully handwritten word appears in her work as a calligraphic mantra.

“Words create a reality.”

Drew.Lab_One’s work shown here plays with the ambiguity of the English word “letter,” which means both “correspondence” and “letter of the alphabet.” The artist created a collage of quotations from the Italian author Italo Calvino using different letter types from different eras and cultures, which symbolize the architectural and cultural diversity of Berlin. For Drew.Lab_One, cities are not stable entities, but a resonance of many voices – the sum of the longings and fears of their inhabitants. In this work, visitors become part of this complex of voices and emotions as they are temporarily reflected in letters written in mirror paint.

Commissioned work