Estate of David Wojnarowicz
David Wojnarowicz
History Keeps Me Awake At Night, 1986
acrylic, spraypaint and collage on masonite
72 x 84 ins.
182.9 x 213.4 cm
Beginning in the late 1970s, David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) created a body of work that spanned photography, painting, music, film, sculpture, writing, and activism. Largely self-taught, he came to prominence in New York in the 1980s, a period marked by creative energy, financial precariousness, and profound cultural changes. Intersecting movements—graffiti, new and no wave music, conceptual photography, performance, and neo-expressionist painting—made New York a laboratory for innovation. Wojnarowicz refused a signature style, adopting a wide variety of techniques with an attitude of radical possibility. Distrustful of inherited structures—a feeling amplified by the resurgence of conservative politics—he varied his repertoire to better infiltrate the prevailing culture.
David Wojnarowicz
Untitled (One Day This Kid [English]), 1990-91/2018
serigraph on archival paper
sheet: 24 x 32 ins. (61 x 81.3 cm)
image: 21 1/2 x 29 ins. (54.6 x 73.7 cm)
Wojnarowicz saw the outsider as his true subject. Queer and later diagnosed as HIV-positive, he became an impassioned advocate for people with AIDS when an inconceivable number of friends, lovers, and strangers were dying due to government inaction. Wojnarowicz’s work documents and illuminates a desperate period of American history: that of the AIDS crisis and culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. But his rightful place is also among the raging and haunting iconoclastic voices, from Walt Whitman to William S. Burroughs, who explore American myths, their perpetuation, their repercussions, and their violence. Like theirs, his work deals directly with the timeless subjects of sex, spirituality, love, and loss. Wojnarowicz, who was thirty-seven when he died from AIDS-related complications, wrote: “To make the private into something public is an action that has terrific ramifications.”
This exhibition is co-curated by David Kiehl, Curator Emeritus, and David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.
Installation view of David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, July 13-September 30, 2018. Photograph by Ron Amstutz.