‘The Inconsolable Energy of Rebellion’: David Wojnarowicz at 70

Wendy Olsoff and Penny Pilkington

There was a lot of pressure around our second one-person show by David Wojnarowicz titled ‘In the Garden’ which opened in November 1990 at our gallery P·P·O·W in New York.

These were the urgent days of the culture wars and David was front and centre. His work was censored in Nan Goldin’s show ‘Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing’ at Artist’s Space (1989), and so was his catalogue ‘Tongues of Flame’ at the Illinois State University Galleries (1990), both of which received funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.  As a way to mobilize their base, the religious right targeted artists to create controversy about how the government funded the arts. David eventually took Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association to court over their highly strategized attack on his work and character. David, though very ill, fought hard and vocally against systemic and pervasive homophobia at the height of the AIDS epidemic when people were dying daily.

All this is to say that people characterized David as angry. They also thought he was a bad painter because the East Village art scene – as part of which he first became known – showed figurative art which was highly disparaged after a short burst of energy.  Yes, he was angry, but he was also loving, gentle and funny.  Few people, aside from his close friends, saw this side of him, so we think he wanted this show ‘In the Garden’ to be about beauty, humour and gorgeous paintings.  The show in the main gallery was quiet. Unique photographs with text and four flower paintings with his writing superimposed on the top. Visitors lingered for hours.

In the entry gallery, we showed 25 Rimbaud photographs David reprinted from his 1978/79 negatives. Not many people knew this work before that moment.  They are famous now – images of David and his friends in Rimbaud masks taken all over the city – just a few years before the AIDS crisis when everything felt possible for these young men.

Gary Schneider

When I first met David, he convinced me to join The Knights wrestling club at the Gay Community Centre. We both had a fantasy about wrestling being sexy, and of course, he came with me to watch. As it turned out, the members were training for the gay games: they weren’t fooling around. I was paired with a man much larger than me. I panicked and immediately flattened myself face down to the mat. I heard David’s big deep wonderful belly laugh. I printed for David, and he gave me work in exchange. One of my last conversations with him was just before he died. I had started exhibiting again, and he said that as an artist I would probably need money at that stage to keep going. If so, I should sell his work to survive, but to please wait till after he died. I will always value his foresight and generosity.

Marion Scemama

July ’89, Adirondacks, Upstate New York.

One day, David woke up depressed. Heavy sleep and bad dreams. 

At breakfast he had this long emotional monologue about the situation he was facing, a series of unanswered questions about facing his programmed death.

What could I say, what could I do? I felt sad and totally helpless. 

We went to the lake. 

My mind was filled with his words.  

I tried to film him as close as possible to what he was feeling.

I froze images of his face in water full of the sun's sparkle, eyes closed, floating in the sky, a ray of light playing on his eyelids, his body dissolving under water, a mixture of eternity, calm and silent tension, rocked by the soothing sound of the water.

Now, when I see these images, I think they express what David has become; a diluted body, a breeze, a ray of sunlight, an element of nature. 

But what remains of him, is the radical power of his words, his voice, his soul and the inconsolable energy of rebellion.

_{Main Image: David Wojnarowicz, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (Coney Island), 1978–79, gelatin silver print. Courtesy: the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P·P·O·W, New York}