David Wojnarowicz

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (On Subway), 1978-79

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Palm Reading), 1978-79

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Masturbating), 1978-79

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Times Square), 1978-79

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Under Brooklyn Bridge), 1978-79

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Peep Show), 1978-79

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David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Sitting / Pier, Gun), 1978-79

David Wojnarowicz was a prolific artist / writer / photographer and activist who died of HIV / AIDS in 1992. Fleeing from an abusive childhood he grew up on the streets on New York City, hustling and making art. By the early 1980s he was one of the most compelling artists in the exploding East Village art scene. When HIV / AIDS began to devastate bodies and the cultural landscape, Wojnarowicz responded prolifically with art and manifestos that communicated a deeply personal language inextricably bound with acute political analysis. Decades after his death, his work continues to inspire and ruffle feathers, in 2010 his video work Fire in my Belly, was censored from the exhibition Hide / Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

His Rimbaud series (1978-79) was his first sustained body of work.  Identifying with the libertine and doomed poet Arthur Rimbaud, author of A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat, is a rite of passage for many a young artist and to Wojnarowicz who was an autodidact, Rimbaud was a powerfully resonant figure. Wojnarowicz resuscitates Rimbaud in the private and public places of his own daily life, on the subway, under the Brooklyn Bridge, jerking off in bed, and sprawled on the floor by his own graffiti in an abandoned pier.  Speaking of his relationship to photography Wojnarowicz stated “Someone once said that the ancients believed that light came from within the eyes and that you cast this light upon things in the world wherever you turned….When I move my eyes very slowly from left to right while sitting still, I can feel and hear a faint clicking sensation suggesting that vision is made up of millions of tiny stills as in transparencies. Since everything is generally in movement around us, then vision is made up of millions of ‘photographed’ and recalled pieces of information.”

For a brilliant and moving account of Wojnarowicz’s life and work please read Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz by Cynthia Carr.