Love Never Dies

Curated by Rebecca Friedman, PhD & Alon Skuy

IPC ArtSpace Opens May 24, 2025

When hospitalized for the final time on April 13, 2021, Jonnie Sparko (born Juan Caraballo and affectionately called Nonon), age 41, requested that photographer Paola Katherine Rodriguez, the love of his life, document his death with her camera. And she did.

This exhibition, Love Never Dies, takes the viewer through the arc of the love affair between Jonnie and Paola, including the images of his final days. Their journey provides an opportunity to reflect and imagine; to smile and mourn, for ourselves and each other. Love Never Dies reveals the simultaneity of fragility and tenacity – both physically and spiritually – in the human experience.

The camera lens is at the center of their story—the bearer of truth. Paola engaged Jonnie in her Broken Free Project, where she photographed survivors of abuse to create a sense of collective healing. Jonnie became her final subject, bearing his soul and illuminating the struggle against invisibility and burden. Through their intertwined lives—marked by illness, joy, and eventual separation—Love Never Dies stands as a powerful testament to the enduring nature of love, urging us to confront the complexities of existence, memory, and transformation.

A week before his passing, both Jonnie and Paola had echoing dreams with Jonnie in a black casket. So connected were they that they could see into each other’s souls, into the same future. Love Never Dies.

This intensely personal exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Jorge M. Perez Family Foundation with support from the Miami Foundation through the CreARTE grant, in association with the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab at FIU, iWitness, and IPC ArtSpace.

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