"Untitled"

Look up, near the ceiling. A band of words and dates runs along the top of the wall like a frieze, which is a long strip of decoration or text set high on a wall. There is no face here and no picture. The lettering is painted in enamel paint straight onto the wall. This is a self-portrait by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, an American artist born in Cuba, made in 1989. Its size is not fixed, because it changes with each place where it is installed.

Start at one end of the band and follow it slowly along the wall. First, notice that it is made only of words and dates, so you read it rather than look at it. Second, watch for two kinds of entry side by side: personal milestones from the artist's own life, and events shared by many people in his era. Third, remember the dates do not stop at his birth or death. Some inscriptions can reach outside the years he lived, which is unusual for a portrait.

The work is quiet and conceptual, meaning the idea matters more than any showy image. The Art Institute of Chicago co-owns it, and that carries a duty: the museum must add and subtract events over time. So the portrait is never finished, and the artist himself gains a form of renewable life. It suggests that human identity is mutable and open-ended, always able to shift. Before you leave, look again along the line and think about where the next event might be added, and what might be taken away.