The Entanglement Between Public and Private in the Work of Félix González-Torres

Abstract

This paper discusses through the prism of psychoanalysis some specific peculiarities of the poetics of the American artist Félix González-Torres. In particular, the text seeks to highlight how the concept of “burial work”, taken here from the work of the French psychoanalyst Pierre Fédida, is central to understanding the ways in which González-Torres has been able to hold together public and private, autobiographical experience and the involvement of the spectator in order to construct a shared memory that develops along the lines of dynamism and imprecision, renouncing common expectations of the representation of a memory.