“Love is expressed through care, responsibility, respect, knowledge, and trust. It is something we do: a commitment to the wellbeing of ourselves and others.”[1]

Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, widely known as Puppies Puppies, engages this year’s curated by theme LOVE through bell hooks’ understanding of love as a practice rather than an emotion. This conception of love has long informed the installation and performance artist’s Gesamtkunstwerk-like approach. She has repeatedly introduced actionable and participatory elements into her exhibitions, using the platform afforded to her as an artist to provide forms of care and practical support for people whose wellbeing is not adequately served by public infrastructures—including trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people of color. Her exhibitions have, for example, incorporated a public shower as well as an HIV testing and counselling room. In this way, her work proposes care for one another, and particularly for one’s community, as…