David Wojnarowicz, a gay American artist/writer/activist, was a figurehead in the 1980s New York art scene. Born in 1954 in New Jersey to a Polish/American marine from Detroit and an Australian orphan mother who was 10 years his fathers junior (26 VS 16), Wojnarowicz’s childhood was certainly one of the ‘unconventional’ variety…

An alcoholic, Wojnarowicz’s father was abusive to both his mother as well as David himself (and his two siblings). Although his parents divorced when he was just two years old and he and his siblings went to live with their mother, his father abducted them from their mothers care. By the age of just 17, Wojnarowicz was traumatised from years of psychological and physical abuse, homeless, living on the streets full time, and sleeping in halfway houses and squats.

But then he found art…

Never one to shy away from ‘taboo’ themes- homosexuality, drug addiction, sadomasochism- 32 years on since his death, Wojnarowicz is remembered for his bitingly political work, in which he addressed issues of poverty, abuse of power, greed, homophobia, and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic*, via hard-hitting art and activism.

*On the latter point- the AIDS epidemic- Wojnarowicz produced some of his most famous work inspired by the injustices his community faced.

‘A photographic image can be a disruption of previously unchallenged power.’ — giving voice to the unspeakable.

When in 1987 his best friend/lover (lines somewhat blurred), Peter Hujar, died of AIDS, Wojnarowicz photographed the body, taking 23 photos (purposefully 23 as he associated that number with the evolution of consciousness- 23 is the number of chromosome pairs in a human cell), a nod to his spirituality, with this- spirituality- being something that has reoccurred in his work, e.g., ‘Something from Sleep III (For Tom Rauffenbart).’

Despite the authorities attempts to ‘drag Wojnarowicz through the dirt’, branding him as a ‘radical homosexual artist/activist’, ‘offensive’, the cause of ‘spiritual injury’, Wojnarowicz refused to let this deter him with, if anything, the backlash he received serving only to reaffirm the need for reform…

An example of some of Wojnarowicz’s most famous, controversial works: 1980, ‘Rimbaud in New York’ (image below). For this piece, Wojnarowicz posed throughout New York in masks of 19th century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, who was also no stranger to a life of sexual taboos (Rimbaud was described by The New York Times as a “sexually fluid renegade genius”), wearing the mask to highlight the parallels of their life, despite the 100+ year difference (i.e., highlighting the urgency, still, for societal change)…

Wojnarowicz was compelled to be himself even if that meant risking everything, including his life. One of his most famous works; ‘One Day This Kid,” a black-and-white self-portrait of the artist as a prepubescent, surrounded by text, reaffirmed this risk, the risk of same-sex desire…

The text:

‘One day this kid will get larger… One day this kid will feel something stir… One day this kid will do something that causes men who wear the uniforms of priests and rabbis, men who inhabit certain stone buildings, to call for his death. One day politicians will enact legislation against this kid… He will be subject to loss of home, civil rights, jobs and all conceivable freedoms. All this will begin to happen in one or two years when he discovers he desires to place his naked body on the naked body of another boy.’ 

The last line ( ^ ) really gets me in my feels, every time.

What does it mean if what you desire is illegal? Fear, frustration, fury, yes, but also a kind of political awakening, a fertile paranoia. “My queerness,” Wojnarowicz once wrote, “is a wedge that separates me from a sick society.”

Making art out of political anger was Wojnarowicz’s forte, and he had plenty to be angry about- the injustices of the abuse he faced in his childhood at the hands of his alcoholic father, of witnessing his friends (and, eventually, himself- Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in 1992, aged just 37) fall victim to AIDS, navigating through a world of inequality, homelessness, homophobia, people trying to shut him up.

Everything about Wojnarowicz’s work centred around the fact that we are born into a pre-invented existence, and our need to awaken to this fact, as he hoped to aid us in via his art in which he explored the collective human experience, aiming to penetrate public consciousness- getting people to stop, listen, and take note of what he was saying, demanding real change from the people in power.

In fact, even his death demands this from us- the need to awaken. Killed at 37, not by aids the disease, but by a diseased society (in Texas, 1985, a local politician said that one way to solve the AIDS crisis was to “shoot the queers’)…

‘I’m amazed we’re not running amok in the streets, and that we can still be capable of gestures of loving after lifetimes of all this.’

In a letter to his friend Philip Zimmerman, Wojnarowicz wrote;

‘I feel kind of satisfied in mapping down my interior world with each thing I make. I’m realizing that there is something elementally important in bringing what is deep inside to light… It can ease the pressure of being alien.’

Being ‘alien’= Being Queer, Wojnarowicz made the ‘outsider’ his subject through his, oftentimes radical, always politically charged, art.

Making us fellow ‘aliens’/’outsiders’ feel seen-
An inspiration.

What…
an…
icon.

David Wojnarowicz everybody ❤

May everyone remember his name.