Love is not a passive state but an active practice – not a
noun, but a verb. Erich Fromm, followed by bell hooks, remind
us that love is an art form requiring attention, discipline,
and risk. Yet, in our post-capitalist reality, energy is
expended on everything but mastering the art of loving — we
pursue possessions, status, and aesthetics in the hope of
‘being’ loved.
As Byung-Chul Han writes, eros suffers under globalised
capitalism, stripped of transcendence and transgression.
According to Ficino, love is the most serious disease of all.
And still, one can’t even throw the word love into a
curatorial setting without the fear of being mocked. This
exhibition insists that love must be reclaimed – not confined
to the narrow script of heterosexual romance, but opened as an
act of being itself, beyond the object: a practice, a labour,
a risk.
Among all the places where the contemporary human rehearses
the art of ‘being loved,’ the beauty salon stands out as a
peculiar animal. The motives for going are never simply about
improvements; they arise from celebration, anticipation,
healing, self-love, distraction, curiosity, even grief. But
whatever the reason, each visit requires effort and risk: the
treatments, the repetition, the time given over to care. One
cannot have perfect nails, hair, or skin without such work —
no matter the myths of ‘I just drink lots of water’ or ‘I put
toothpaste on my pimples’. So too with love: the circumstances
may differ, but without effort and tending, it cannot
flourish.
To love is to submit to ongoing treatments, to allow for risk,
novelty, and care. Love is an attitude, and in Treatment Menu,
there is hope strong enough that would make bell hooks proud.
Here, the gallery is reimagined as a beauty salon: a place of
treatments, rituals, and conversations. The artists confront
contemporary love’s paradoxes and possibilities through
material, body, and myth:
Eva Dixon interrogates queerness, gender, and labour with
humour and defiance, dismantling binaries to open new spaces
of desire and self-love.
Hoa Dung Clerget reworks the aesthetics of nail art and
oriental kitsch, placing them within the histories of
migration and displacement, revealing the ambiguities of
beauty.
Julia Thompson channels heartbreak, addiction, grief, and
desire into fragile yet powerful works, exposing the
vulnerability of female embodiment.
Harry Whitelock conjures ghostly material traces of
disintegrating mythologies, where canvases fray like
wallpaper, mapping memory, loss, and longing.
Ella Fleck examines the psychosexual mechanisms of control,
manipulation, and misinterpretation that structure
contemporary desires.
Natalia Janula confronts the hyper-capitalist condition, where
love itself becomes a commodified spectacle, authenticity
dissolving into simulation.
Paula Parole turns to autotheory and self-fiction,
reinterpreting personal narratives with humour, probing
patterns of love, destiny, and fairy-tale longing.
Together, these practices propose love not as a fleeting fall
but as a sustained standing – an act of persistence and
invention. Like salon treatments undertaken for healing,
anticipation, or curiosity, love requires repetition,
exposure, and care.
Naz Balkaya, alongside her role as co-curator, presents
Breakup Kit, 2025, a sculpture piece created in response to
her own heartbreak. Each object in the kit becomes an allegory
for how, in a culture of consumer comforts, substitutes for
care are endlessly available.
The conversations that grew around Breakup Kit gave birth to
this exhibition. As Naz was shaping her work, we began to ask
each other: what is love, and what survives it? For me, this
question deepened over a summer spent in hospital with my
father. On my rare days off, visits to the beauty salon became
something more than vanity: fleeting rituals of instant
happiness, conversations with strangers, and the quiet promise
of care that outlasts its moment.
This exhibition is therefore also a disclosure. It does not
only frame love through art, but through lived experience.
Because love cannot flourish without honesty.
In a culture where to speak of love risks ridicule, Treatment
Menu insists: only love can heal the wounds of the past.
– Gigi Surel