The Dead Taste Sweeter Than The Living
This piece began with the daily collection for a year and a half of the piece Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), 1991, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres, from the Art Institute of Chicago to my studio and then public spaces outside of the museum as a place to initiate a dialogue around morning, grief, celebration and the impact of loss in queer communities through the AIDS crisis.
Through this process I have been in dialogue with AIDS-activist/artist Paul Escriva, who has been a mentor and bridge connecting with this past, which created a rupture of an entire generation. The performance has three main parts a movement piece focus on grief, and mourning. A meditation, which involves the separation of the over 23,000 candies into colors, and then using the candy themselves to write pieces from the archive of Felix Gonzalez- Torres, and texts from the interviews.
performed at Art AIDS America Chicago , organized by Alphawood Foundation, and at the DePaul Art Museum for the exhibition One Day This Kid Will Get Larger curated by Danny Orendorff.
Duration: 3 hours.