Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). 1991. Candies in variously colored wrappers, endless supply.

Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) manifests as a pile of hard candies representative of Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres’ partner who died of complications from the AIDS virus, at his ideal weight of 175 pounds. The audience is invited to take candies with them in an act of bittersweet remembrance that simultaneously eats away at Ross’s ideal weight. The work resists the statistical abstraction of the devastating pandemic that tore through queer and marginalized communities, in favor of a poetic act of communion in which the body is recalled through synecdochic ingestion.