Love, Amyl is a project rooted in personal experience, identity performance, and the complexities of contemporary sex work. Drawing from a period in which Barrington worked as a sugar baby, the project reflects on a time of heightened narcissism, material exchange, and emotional entanglement. When the arrangement abruptly ended, it left behind not only a sense of loss, but also a deeper curiosity about the lives and working conditions of modern-day sex workers.

This turning point led Barrington into research around online solicitation and the increasing legal pressures and digital discrimination facing sex workers today. Many face a paradox: being expected to market themselves as desirable products while being punished for doing so.

In response, Barrington created Amyl—a persona that allowed him to step into the world of cross-dressing, not only as a method of self-expression but as a character through which the project could unfold. Amyl became both a mask and a mirror: a space to explore image, power, and desirability on his own terms.

The final piece took the form of a cockade fan—an object historically tied to status and seduction—plastered with Amyl’s face on the front, and mirrored on the back. The mirror acts as a symbol of self-obsession and self-reflection, while the fan itself becomes a speculative product: a legal grey area for self-solicitation. Love, Amyl blurs the lines between performance, protest, and persona, reclaiming agency in a system designed to take it away.