In awaken my love, Hurst utilizes materials such as soft sculpture, drawings and a taxidermied rat to explore one of humanity's life-long questions: what happens when we die? The exhibition is a love letter in search of answers. Born from the artist’s childhood pitfalls with religion and early exposures to death, Hurst explores the depths of this question by rendering animal deaths as a means to understand human death. The artist states:

If my life remained intact without religion, then how real were the horrors and promises I was raised on? How real was heaven? I had never seen what it was like for a human to die, let alone its remnants. Contrarily, stumbling upon dead animals throughout my day-to-day became a trivial and mundane experience. How could I grasp animal death as being so finite and absolute, yet I am in denial of the same fate for myself? If I am to fully believe that my life can be spiritually infinite, I must believe the same is true for other beings of this world as well.

awaken my love treats animal death with the same sentiment and delicacy that we give to fellow humans. The work refers to mourning practices, family and the physicality of life itself.

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A limited edition zine was released in conjunction with the exhibition and is available through Flowerpot Books.