In Forbidden Colors (1988), a work comprised of four monochrome panels, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (b. 1957 in Guáimaro; d. 1996 in Miami, FL) employs the power and poetry of abstraction to stake a position in the arena of public discourse, while holding space for the innumerable and unnamed ways that human beings overpopulate the labels we take up as our politicized selves. In an excerpt from a text that lays out his approach, the artist wrote:
“This work is about my exclusion from the circle of power where social and cultural values are elaborated and about my rejection of the imposed and established order. It is a fact people are discriminated against for being HIV positive. It is a fact the majority of the Nazi industrialists retained their wealth after war. It is a fact the night belongs to Michelob and Coke is real. It is a fact the color of your skin matters. It is a fact Crazy Eddie’s prices are insane. It is a fact that four colors red, black, green and white placed next to each other in any form are strictly forbidden by the Israeli army in the occupied Palestinian territories. This color combination can cause an arrest, a beating, a curfew, a shooting, or a news photograph. Yet it is a fact that these forbidden colors, presented as a solitary act of consciousness here in SoHo, will not precipitate a similar reaction.”
In 1993, the ban on colors Gonzalez-Torres describes was lifted. On January 8, 2023, it was re-instated. Through the work’s seemingly quiet strength and reserve, the artist considers how those in power can perpetrate grave injustice against so many people without public outrage. Gonzalez-Torres shows us that solidarity emerges with a person’s recognition that the prevailing conditions are harmful to them in the same way that another person has already grappled with these realities in their life.
