The bed-shared by the Cuban American artist and his long-term lover Ross Laycock until the latter’s passing in 1991-is a silent monument of gay sex and bonding, imprinted with the bodies of two lovers who would eventually both pass due to AIDS-related illnesses. The photo exuded unabashed intimacy, in public, and at a scale exclusively reserved for consumerist promotions.įelix Gonzalez-Torres’s Untitled (billboard of an empty bed) has since stood as a beacon of queer intimacy made public through art. Though the black-and-white image of an anonymous couple’s love nest may sound demure, the two dented pillows and a freshly folded blanket pierced passersby’s attention.
In the early 1990s, when waves of change in identity politics swept through the art world, dozens of billboards featuring an unmade bed sprouted up across New York.
