David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night | Art & Artists

Wojnarowicz made this print in 1990 to benefit ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). ACT UP was founded in 1987 and Wojnarowicz participated in its meetings and demonstrations, notably the October 11, 1988, action at the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, Maryland, protesting the agency’s slow pace of drug approval. Wojnarowicz painted the back of his jean jacket to read: IF I DIE OF AIDS—FORGET BURIAL—JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE F.D.A.

As early as 1988, ACT UP used the rallying cry “the AIDS crisis is not over” to keep HIV and AIDS in the forefront of politics and culture. HIV and AIDS continue to affect individuals and communities throughout the world, disproportionately people of color. On the evening of Friday, July 27, 2018, members of ACT UP New York staged an action in the Whitney’s galleries to reassert that AIDS is not history. Members carried placards with articles and information pertaining to the ongoing HIV and AIDS pandemic.

Wojnarowicz used red string as a material throughout his practice. From his early supermarket posters to the flower paintings, he stitched red string into the surface of his compositions to suggest the seams and irreconcilable breaks in culture. In his unfinished film A Fire in My Belly (1986–87), Wojnarowicz included footage of the stitching together of a broken loaf of bread. This sculpture is a physical manifestation of that earlier idea. The film also included footage of what appeared to be a man’s lips being sewn together. A version of that image by Andreas Sterzing—picturing Wojnarowicz himself—would become one of the most galvanizing images to come out of the AIDS crisis.

This photograph was taken in late May 1991 at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico while Wojnarowicz and his friend Marion Scemama took a road trip around the American Southwest. Cynthia Carr, Wojnarowicz’s biographer, describes how the photograph came to be: “He had been there before and knew exactly where he wanted to stage this.‘We’re going to dig a hole,’ he told her, ‘and I’m going to lie down. ’  They began digging without saying a word, a hole for his upper body and a bit for the legs. They used their hands. The dirt was loose and dry. He lay down and closed his eyes. Marion put dirt around his face till it was halfway up his cheeks and then stood over him, photographing his halfburied face first with his camera and then with hers.”