Jörgen Axelvall's new book art rat. A memoir in words and photographs.
Art Rat is an amalgamation of autobiographical prose, poetry, and visual chapter-breaks, and lets us in to the innermost thoughts of a queer
man facing down HIV, and later cancer, whilst choosing to push forward and live as best and truthfully as he can.
LATEST • lara may • october 22nd, 2026
Introducing Art Rat by Jörgen Axelvall, an artistic memoir exploring the cross-section of underground queer scenes in New York, and the delicacy of life and love beyond. Axelvall takes us through a journey of joy, love, curiosity, and belief – with the eye of a photographer and the soul of a poet. Art Rat is an amalgamation of autobiographical prose, poetry, and visual chapter-breaks, and lets us in to the innermost thoughts of a queer man facing down HIV, and later cancer, whilst choosing to push forward and live as best and truthfully as he can.
Placing us in a continuously fragmenting world as we move from New York to Tokyo, Axelvall draws us in with his wicked humour, and keeps us there with his honesty and absurdity. He makes no effort to invoke our pity, or even our sympathy, but rather our hope and our connection. This is not a book that you move through in hopes of an emotional payoff for the reader. This is a book that moves through you, that doesn’t care how you feel about it because it’s real, and it’s happening, and therefore it must continue moving.
Throughout the book, whilst Axelvall is reflecting on his life, he continues to refer to the “memories of gayer times,” something that in today’s landscape feels poignant and such a beautifully simplistic rendering of nostalgia. We open Art Rat and are dropped in the 1990s, into a queer scene and cultural world that has transformed since into something unrecognisable, something that feels lost. When consuming queer media, we have become adjusted to watching stories of love and death unfold in the face of HIV, often to the emotional detriment of the consumer, for it is to often that these stories skew towards the morose. Axelvall takes us through this story of illness, moving us through this spiral of “Disease. Doom. Death,” and yet chooses to focus not on the fear, but on the perseverance. To take from his parting words as this story comes to a close: “Death is inevitable, whether tomorrow from a freak accident, or years later from inherited genetics or old age. Meanwhile we live.”
Throughout the book, whilst Axelvall is reflecting on his life, he continues to refer to the “memories of gayer times,” something that in today’s landscape feels poignant and such a beautifully simplistic rendering of nostalgia. We open Art Rat and are dropped in the 1990s, into a queer scene and cultural world that has transformed since into something unrecognisable, something that feels lost. When consuming queer media, we have become adjusted to watching stories of love and death unfold in the face of HIV, often to the emotional detriment of the consumer, for it is to often that these stories skew towards the morose. Axelvall takes us through this story of illness, moving us through this spiral of “Disease. Doom. Death,” and yet chooses to focus not on the fear, but on the perseverance. To take from his parting words as this story comes to a close: “Death is inevitable, whether tomorrow from a freak accident, or years later from inherited genetics or old age. Meanwhile we live.”