Treatment Menu: Love as a Practice, a Labor, and a Risk

Display Fever, founded by artist and curator Naz Balkaya is an art platform and online gallery presenting multidisciplinary contemporary practices. Based in London, it operates through an international, multi functional model, staging exhibitions in both traditional galleries and alternative spaces. Display Fever perceives itself as a movement a supporter of artistic experimentation through collaborative methods — and is defined by a frenetic energy toward collectivism, intimacy, and mutual support. Acting as both an online gallery and a curatorial practice, it values the outsider and the unconventional, proposing a counter-capital to the systemic institutional landscape.

Founded in London by Gigi Surel, Teaspoon Projects is a dynamic curatorial initiative dedicated to exploring the intricate layers of contemporary storytelling. Embracing the enigmatic and the elliptical, it creates spaces where emerging and diverse artistic voices converge, fostering dialogue that transcends boundaries and resists easy resolution. Through ephemeral pop-ups and multifaceted programming, Teaspoon Projects delves into the interplay between art and life, amplifying the subtle threads and undercurrents that shape our shared and individual experiences.

Together, Teaspoon Projects and Display Fever present Treatment Menu — a collaborative exhibition born out of deeply personal inquiry. The show takes its name from the rituals of self care that sit somewhere between indulgence and necessity, healing and performance. Emerging from conversations around Naz’s previous exhibition Breakup Kit, the project asks a deceptively simple question: what is love, and what survives it?

Can you tell me how your collaboration started, what makes your curatorial partnership work so well — how do your ideas and approaches complement each other?

Our mutual friends kept saying we had to meet because we’d get along so well. I went to a Display Fever exhibition, and we immediately connected. We both take curating very personally and aren’t afraid to be vulnerable, which makes our collaboration quite natural. I do a lot of writing, while Naz actually makes art, so our approach to working with artists feels very holistic. We’re both deeply emotional people, and we lead with empathy – toward each other and our collaborators.

“Treatment Menu draws on ideas from Erich Fromm and bell hooks, who describe love not as a passive emotion but as an art form – a verb rather than a noun. In a culture obsessed with productivity, aesthetics, and possession, the exhibition asks what it means to love with intention and courage.” Can you share what sparked the idea to turn this into an exhibition – when did it click that these concepts could be explored as a curated, immersive experience?

Gigi: Naz was reflecting on what happens to love after a breakup, while I was confronting love through illness and the fear of death. The idea of contemporary love – shaped by dating apps, constant connectivity, and information overload – had been on our minds for a long time. We wanted to explore how this excess of data interacts with love, which remains such a vague, porous concept. In a way, we’re responding to the idea that talking about love is somehow basic or cliché. You know the Vogue article saying that having a boyfriend has become embarrassing – maybe that’s true, but I worry people might start confusing that cynicism with love itself, as if love were something to be ashamed of.

When I was exploring the work of the artists in Treatment Menu, I noticed their pieces are often bold, raw, unconventional, and even surreal — mostly using everyday objects like nail polish, or forks etc, breaking them down, reimagining them, or presenting them in a way that challenges how we usually see them. How did you go about selecting the artists, and what do they represent in your art community? Would you describe their approach as part of a broader movement, and is there a specific way you, as curators, would define this style of making art?

For us, it always comes back to the personal. We love working with artists who think deeply and treat materials and histories almost like living beings. It’s hard to frame it as a broader movement, but what unites these artists is their fearlessness in embracing vulnerability. The selection process was very organic – some we discovered by chance, others we’d admired for a long time, and a few were past collaborators. But all of them connected with the idea immediately. We wouldn’t embark on something like this with anyone who wasn’t fully committed. Naz is contributing an artwork, and I’m offering my grief for my father – so we’re both part of the exhibition too.

Gigi, you’ve mentioned your commitment to expanding cross-cultural dialogues. Why does that feel vital to you — and what kind of understanding or transformation do you think can emerge from those conversations?

Gigi: I think art still exists in a bit of a bubble compared to, say, music. Some people feel they’re not ‘intellectual’ enough to attend exhibitions, and I want to have a role in changing that perception. By bringing other sensory and creative elements – sound, scent, taste, movement – into the exhibition space, I hope to show that art is something to be felt, not just understood. Ideally, I want to live in a world where art becomes almost instinctive, like a reflex – something that resonates on a bodily level before it’s ever analysed.

And looking back at an exhibition that Naz curated in May this year; The Luster. I notice a pattern: both exhibitions explore deeply personal emotions — lust, love — while also showing how they connect to the world around us. Is this balance between the personal and the broader societal something that you both set out to do from the start, or did it emerge as you were developing these shows?

Naz: I believe that both Gigi and I engage with questions that are personally present in our lives at a given moment. When I curated Luster, I was immersed in thoughts around desire and longing. As you begin to interrogate a feeling or concept, you inevitably realise that it resonates beyond the self that others are shaped by it too. What begins as a private inquiry expands into a collective one. The idea that the personal is political, rooted in the movements of the 1960s, continues to hold truth in artistic practice today. Love, lust, and human connection are deeply affected by the accelerated rhythm of contemporary life not only in our intimate routines, but also in the language of global systems, conflicts, and wars. These forces press on our emotions, shaping how we relate to one another, which is why they remain urgent subjects in art.

Display Fever operates as both an online gallery and a curatorial platform, often working in alternative spaces, and Teaspoon Projects explores contemporary storytelling through ephemeral pop-ups. I’m reminded of projects like U-Haul Gallery by James Sundquist and Jack Chase, which challenged traditional notions of what a gallery can be and emerged from frustration with the financial constraints of showing work in New York City. Do you see this kind of flexible, alternative approach as part of a broader shift in the art scene — locally or even globally — and what excites you most about it?

Naz: Display Fever born through my personal feelings as an artist. The platform’s name itself is a motto and motivation to rethink about your practice. It is about displaying your personal fever and believing in yourself and voice politically. As artists who work in multidimensional and experimental forms we are often underrepresented and can feel lonely. Display Fever is about coming together through a community and be able to be vulnerable to express those struggles and accepting your uniqueness through being together. The art world operates through class structures and can often be competitive and marginalising. I see curating as a form of care and art, and the meaning and context of a site are central to the exhibition’s concept, offering a natural dimension and an alternative approach to curatorial practice. The traditional model of the physical gallery is increasingly becoming unsustainable, and that new forms of curating continue to emerge out of necessity which is incredibly exciting. I think Gigi and I share similar views and approaches to curating, which brought us together and makes this exhibition very special.

Looking ahead, what other topics or themes would you like to explore in upcoming exhibitions?

Naz: Lately, I have been questioning ideas of belonging, attachment, and addiction and how these forces create boundaries both within art and in our personal lives. Many artists become attached to certain forms or processes, yet that very attachment can transform into a performance in itself. I want to explore how this emotional and material commitment shapes a political sensibility and generates a response.

Gigi: Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about uncertainty – especially how contemporary women and non-binary artists use it as a condition, a tool, a method, and even an outcome in their work. I hope this research will eventually become both a book and an exhibition. I approach collecting, writing, and curating as deeply interconnected practices all parts of one holistic way of seeing.

Exhibiting Artists:

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.