“Hell is a place on earth. Heaven is a place in your head.” Thus wrote New York based artist David Wojnarowicz in his essay Shadow Of The American Dream. He was a gay activist, print maker, painter, poet and photographer who died of complications from AIDS in 1992.
It was only in 2018 that the arts establishment decided to afford Wojnarowicz the recognition he deserved by staging a series of retrospectives of his work. One of those exhibitions was held at the Whitney Museum in New York and was titled History Keeps Me Awake At Night.
Born in New Jersey in 1954, he began creating a body of work in the late ‘70’s. But given his background it is remarkable that he made it to adulthood at all. He was the youngest of 3 children, his mother was very young whilst the father was a violent alcoholic. When David was 2 years old, his parents split up and after spending time with his siblings in a boarding house where beatings were frequent, they ended up with their father and his new wife in New Jersey, the universe of the neatly clipped lawn – according to Wojnarowicz, “where physical and psychic violence against women, gay people and children could be carried out without repercussions.”
Chelsea Piers, the setting for much of Wojnarowicz’s photography
By the mid 1960’s, the Wojnarowicz children decided they’d had enough of their father’s violence and traced down their mother, but she had only a tiny apartment in Manhattan and was in no shape to be caring for 3 now troubled children due to having problems of her own.
David eventually ran away from home and found himself hustling in Times Square at the age of 15. He also liked to draw and go to movies on his own. He briefly returned to his mother’s apartment but she had already kicked out his siblings and at 17, he found himself on the streets for good. He would sleep in boiler rooms or cars, some men were kind to him, some weren’t. In 1973 his sister threw out a lifeline by offering him a bedroom in her apartment.
Wojnarowicz, Self Portrait 1983-85
In the late 70’s he began taking photographs of his friends wearing a mask of his kindred spirit Arthur Rimbaud in locations from his hustling days before he fell into the somewhat dysfunctional East Village art scene that included Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat and Peter Hujar.
Jacket worn by Wojnarowicz at a 1988 AIDS demonstration.
But it was the AIDS crisis that propelled Wojnarowicz’s work to prominence in the 1980’s as, one by one, he witnessed his friends and lovers die of a disease the Reagan Administration refused to name. Art (and for that matter, sex) provided him with an avenue to escape the loneliness and isolation of his life – to escape the “prison of the self” as author Olivia Liang puts it in her book The Lonely City.
Wojnarowicz, Death Of American Spirituality 1987
In his wanderings around New York he often found himself at the Chelsea Piers which were left in a dilapidated state following the decline of shipping in the 1960’s. It was here where his erotic and creative juices were fed and it was here where the ravages of the AIDS epidemic took hold. Photography was to Wojnarowicz an act of taking possession, a way of making something visible and keeping it in storage. He also produced some short films and his writings included the autobiography Close To The Knives (1991). The title says it all. After he was diagnosed with AIDS in the late 80’s, his work took on a more political edge and he became involved in public debates around medical research and funding, morality and censorship in the arts, and the legal rights of artists.
Wojnarowicz, One Day This Kid 1990
According to Laing, 66,000 people died of AIDS in New York City alone between 1981 and 1996 when combination therapies became available. People were sacked from their jobs and rejected by their families, patients were left on hospital trolleys (that’s if they were able to be admitted in the first place). Nurses refused to treat them, funeral parlours to bury them and politicians and religious leaders blocked funding and education.
Wojnarowicz, Green Head 1982
In Close To The Knives Wojnarowicz wrote “My rage is really about the fact that when I was told I had contracted this virus it didn’t take me long to realize I had contracted a diseased society.” He died 22 July, 1992 with his lover and family beside him. The expression triumph in the face of adversity is a tediously overused cliché, yet it seems to describe his life. In spite of everything he went through, he was able to so intensely and eloquently express his inner most feelings through a variety of media. And act as a passionate spokesman on behalf of others.
Chelsea Piers
References;
The Guardian
The Lonely City – Olivia Laing, Picador Press, 2016