COMMUNION, 2022

“Communion”
Performative intervention. 2022

On May 14th of 2022, I removed an entire installation by Felix González-Torres titled, “Untitled" (Welcome Back Heroes), 1991. The work was on view in The Temptation to Exist at Galerie LeLong & Co and a walk-through by artist and curator Alfredo Jaar, was pending. I packed my bags with the Bazooka candy and made a procession from Chelsea to The LGBT Center on 13th street. I installed the artwork in The Center’s bathroom which houses Keith Haring’s iconic, Once Upon a Time mural, finished in 1990.

By removing González-Torres’s candy from its white-cube exhibit and bringing it into a former restroom in a queer community center, the work undergoes a transformation - from exclusive to communal, private to public. 

Haring’s work represents a time of queer sexuality before the AIDS crisis turned an environment of freedom into one of fear. He painted the mural just four months before his own death from AIDS related illness. His explicit illustrations of gay sexuality are fitting for a public bathroom - a spot for cruising. Haring yearned for a sense of liberation - maybe he wasn’t drawing the past, but rather the future… We are on the precipice of an HIV vaccine, and with several medical advancements available the presence of death has been essentially removed from queer sexuality.

Removing González-Torres’s candy from its exhibited space also suspends its decay. In the gallery setting, González-Torres asks the audience to participate and take candy, to consume and deprive the work until it becomes nonexistent; dead. In The Center, visitors are given no instructions upon seeing the work in Haring’s bathroom; the two exist together in stalled time. Like stumbling upon two ghosts having a conversation, a reminder of one’s vitality and of the magnitude of change that walks along the passage of time.

A communion between two deceased artists becomes optimistic, without fear, without the lingering threat of a wasting illness, an opportunity to reflect on the futurity of what is possible. My generation does not know AIDS. It doesn’t remember it. It can’t remember it. It didn’t live through it. However, it is our duty to pass on our shared history and pay homage to those who came before us… those who acted up in the face of disease and those who died silent. 

Once upon a time is the present day.