Taking its title from Correggio’s sixteenth century mythological painting of Venus with Mercury and Cupid, Locke’s installation questions, “How do you learn to love? Who teaches you?” For Locke, Correggio’s composition “moved me to think about my own coming of age with a measure of compassion for my younger self and what it took for me to survive my own life.” Ultimately inspiring him to channel this personal experience into a multi-part work, The School of Love (2016) employs numerous cast heads of fauns—intended as the artist’s doppelgänger—some punctured with nails and suspended from the ceiling or hanging from a shelf lined with a selection of gay pornographic books. Reflecting on the often distressing path of learning to love, particularly as a Black queer man, Locke recalls, “When every picture/movie/image/idea of you is a criminal/thing/object/void being killed over and over, how can you be loved? Why would you want to be?... Some of what I was taught took a long time to unlearn.” While the installation suggests what Locke calls a “sentimental education,” it is also imbued with a sense of violence and urgency that speaks to the politics of the current moment.
