For Jean
The trigger for the creation of this work was unresolved grief following the loss of my friend Juan Cueto. His family buried him according to their own beliefs and against his own—erasing his queer life, partner, and community. This double denial—as if he had not only died, but never existed—left me with a profound sense of injustice and the question: how can we mourn an indecent indecently? Traditional funeral rituals enforce solemnity, stripping the body of its sexual history. This desexualization is not neutral—it is a tool of moral control, an act of erasing queer existence.12
But can we remember the dead and still honor them as sexual beings?
A Camp Reinterpretation of Memento Mori
At the center of the installation rests a jockstrap—men’s underwear popular among gay men that exposes the buttocks. It is encircled by Schwedenbomben—Austrian chocolate-coated foam sweets on wafers. This dessert, whose delicate shell cracks at the slightest touch, evokes the vanitas tradition and Baroque still lifes, in which desserts functioned as a meditation on the fleeting nature of life and the futility of earthly pursuits.
As mass-produced, inexpensive sweets, Schwedenbomben introduce irony and a camp aesthetic rooted in queer culture. They fuse the motif of memento mori (Latin for “remember that you must die”) with exaggeration, humor, and artifice. In this context, Schwedenbomben become a camp reinterpretation of memento mori.
Oil on panel. 43.7 x 68.2 cm, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
The desert in Baroque still life functions as a meditation on the impermanence of life and the futility of earthly pursuits.
Pleasure over Practicality
Both the jockstrap and the Swedish bomb are made primarily for pleasure. Sweets packed with sugar offer no real nutritional value. Instead, their taste, appearance, and smell are carefully designed to maximize enjoyment. Similarly, the jockstrap barely covers the skin, functioning less as a practical garment and more as a means to enhance the body’s sexual allure. Thus, in both cases, function gives way to sensation, and utility is replaced by the pursuit of pleasure.
A Queer Ritual
But where is the body? Is it a summoning, an offering, or both?
The jockstrap, lying on the ground, evokes the absence of the body: a trace of someone once present, desired, and lost. Paired with the sweets, it recalls food offerings for the dead found across cultures—from Día de Muertos and Slavic Dziady to the Hungry Ghost Festival—rituals that seek to bridge the gap between the living and the dead.
Photo by Spangineer.
Meanwhile, the circle suggests a protective barrier—separating the summoner from the unknown forces they seek to invoke. In Western esoteric tradition, materials like salt, flour, or chalk were used to form magic circles. Yet here, the Schwedenbomben are used, introducing a humorous twist—a sprinkle of absurdity.
Political Power of Queer Grief
In 1991, Felix González-Torres placed a pile of wrapped candies in a gallery to commemorate the loss of his close friend to AIDS — Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). Visitors were free to take candies away. The gradually diminishing pile of candies mirrored the deterioration and disappearance of patience consumed by the disease.
Queer erasure is an ongoing practice: the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. removed all reference to the artist’s lover and AIDS.
Photo by mark6mauno.
Similarly, my piece reflects the grief I carry from losing my dear friend, Jean Cueto3. Private loss becomes public once again, and queerness becomes visible once more. Queer mourning carries political and revolutionary potential4. The shared experience of loss builds community, solidarity, and resistance against the forced forgetting of non-heteronormative lives.
It is bittersweet. Silly at first glance—just some underwear and candy. Yet it carries deeper meaning and hope: hope that emerges from vulnerability, from sharing pain, and from refusing to forget.
Queer Art Space Vienna Award 2026
For the artwork How to Mourn a Faggot, Michał Rutz received 2nd place (ex aequo with Valentino Skarwan) in the Queer Art Space Vienna Award 2026.
Shows:
- Kunstraum Seestadt, Vienna, Patches over Lines, 2024
- Academy of Fine Arts Vienna — Presentation of the Top Three Finalists, Queer Art Space Prize 2026
notes
- At the presentation at the Fine Arts Academy, many guests asked if they could eat them, although they were on the ground.
- Some guests mentioned that the reflective waistband recalls high-visibility safety vests, evoking associations with protection.
- As Judith Butler argues in Melancholy Gender, heteronormative structures require the erasure of queer bonds—a forced oblivion in which the lost lover, unacceptable desires, and unlivable life are relegated to the realm of the unspeakable. “I never loved him, I never lost him.” ↩︎
- Compulsory heterosexuality refers to the systematic imposition of heterosexual norms as the default. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick critiques this in Epistemology of the Closet (1990), analyzing how heteronormativity shapes knowledge, power, and historical narratives, often erasing queer lives and desires. ↩︎
- His death is a reminder of the struggles faced by many of us within the LGBT community. According to a 2023 Trevor Project survey, 18% of LGBT youth have attempted suicide—twice the rate of their peers in the general teenage population. This devastating statistic highlights the enduring effects of minority stress. ↩︎
- In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed shows how emotions operate not only within individual experience but also as social and political forces. Grief—understood in this context—shapes both the individual and the collective. Emotions create and sustain social structures, which is why queer grief is not merely a personal experience, but circulates within the community, building shared spaces of intimacy and resistance. ↩︎