A series of collages assembling found elements and drawings, “Birthday Boy” turns LIFE magazine’s July 1985 issue into a canvas. Coinciding with Ababri’s month and year of birth, this period also registered the highest peak in the number of deaths associated with the AIDS epidemic. Each framed piece features a double spread from the magazine, deconstructing the original publication into its building blocks and creating new juxtapositions between seemingly unrelated content covered in July 1995. This contributes to create a distanced, critical look into the historical moment, while Ababri’s collages and drawings bring into play elements from his own biography as well as Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ vocabulary. Images of strange birds, toys with popping eyes and toilet paper motifs meet Calvin Klein models from the 1990s, reports on AIDS, sports events and terror attacks, bringing forth an archeology of queer artifacts in an ambiguous relationship to context.