Only Lovers Left Alive (2024)

Found Objects, Mink, Lamb, and Goat Pelts.

Gallery Kent in Tangier, Morocco. Curated by Kenza Amrouk.

Love is blind: the proverb is false. Love opens his eyes wide, love produces clear-sightedness: "I have, about you, of you, absolute knowledge."1

"There's a great deal of emotion to process when working with materials of the natural world, more specifically those from animal. It is difficult to understand the ethics that come with it, symbiotic codependence, the violence, the necessity, and value of living off the land. We are currently at a crossroads, if we deny and avoid such discourse altogether, in doing so, we deny our humanity."2

The struggle surrounding our relationship to the natural world is very similar to the complexity of Love. Love is not only happiness, it is sometimes sorrow. But in all its trials and misunderstandings, it is possible to create moments of tenderness and beauty. It is this tenderness and beauty that brings value, energy, health and well-being into our daily lives.

In the appreciation that the good comes with the bad, it allows us to build, rather than destroy. The magnitude of love can only be realized if we understand the intimacy and complexity of the sacrifices being made in order to attain it.

Of course, we could avoid Love, because it causes such pain, but what good would life be without it. How else would we fuel our existence? —Kenza Amrouk

1. Roland Barthes, Roland Barthe's "A Lover's Discourse". TRUTH vérité/ truth, pg.229

2. Words from the artist, Cristin Richard