beyond the sea

These gay lovers were exposed & marooned on a deserted island in 1727. Now, their story is finally being told.

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Art can be most anything! But if you turned the corner at a museum and saw this specific exhibit, you’d be forgiven if you thought you accidentally stumbled into an ad for Helix Studios.

Two life-size “living portraits” of twunks hanging side-by-side in a gallery—but not touching. Their expressions are blank, as they stare into a camera for an indeterminate amount of time, though the sight of their bare torsos is certainly… alluring. Who are these two, and where can we watch?

That’s certainly the response X user @alexjb24 had when they first got a peek at the art on display at the National Gallery Of Victoria in Australia. “Started off thinking ‘oh HI’ when I saw this exhibit,” they wrote of their encounter with the guys.

But then they read what this piece was really about and “kinda choked up”:

Labeled as “Untitled (Bram)” and “Untitled (Ruel),” respectively, these pieces are part of an exhibit from Australian artist Drew Pettifer titled A Sorrowful Act: The Wreck Of The Zeewjik, one that aims to shine a light on forgotten queer history.

As the placard notes, these dual portraits tell a story from 1727, when two young male lovers (Bram, 18, and Ruel, 22) were aboard the Zeewjik, a ship porting cargo for the Dutch East India Company.

Per historical records, Bram and Ruel’s affair was discovered, and shortly after they were convicted of sodomy. Their punishment? They were marooned on separate islands in the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago, off the coast of Western Australia, where they each died alone.

Due to their trial, the young lovers’ heartbreaking tale is recognized as “the first recorded moment in (European) queer history in Australia.” Unsurprisingly, tragedy has plagued our community from the very beginning, and Pettifer’s work re-contextualizes the past in order to make us rethink our present.

Over on Gay Twitter™, the pieces seem to have their intended effect, with @alexjb24’s post—and the sight of Bram and Ruel’s perky pecs—raking in 1.8 million views and counting.

Related:

That time Italian fascists exiled a bunch of gay guys to an island & accidentally created a M4M utopia

Hello, readers! Today’s queer history lesson takes us to Italy under the reign of Mussolini. 

But reactions are certainly divided. The exhibit has many in their feelings, while some fail to see how the pieces convey much of anything without the existence of the placard to spell out the real-life story. Others are taking issue with everything from the fact that it valorizes colonizers to Bram and Ruel’s age difference.

Folks, we present to you: The discourse….

So, yeah, reactions to A Sorrowful Act are all over the place. But hey, it’s starting all sorts of conversations, and isn’t that what good art is supposed to do?

And, on top of that, it’s got us talking about the little-known story of Bram and Ruel and a forgotten corner of LGBTQ+ history, so it sounds like the artist Drew Pettifer’s mission is accomplished, no?

It’s even got some gears turning for a movie adaptation, with some calling for this tragic romance to be re-told on the big screen—albeit with a slightly happier ending perhaps.

And, hey, even if the studios aren’t ready to pony up the cash for a sweeping gay romance set on the high seas, we’re sure an X-rated version would do just fine:

Related:

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Garrett Clayton and Matthew Postlethwaite star as two real-life soldiers, desperately in love but torn apart by war.

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