David Wojnarowicz, Earth, 1987

Narrator: In the paintings you see in this room, Wojnarowicz responded to a classical art-historical theme, the Four Elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. He began them after Peter Hujar tested positive for HIV in early 1987. He described the series in a talk he gave at the Whitney in 1991.

David Wojnarowicz: I wanted to do a series about the Four Elements. I was also dealing with the loss of a very close friend who was dying of AIDS at the time, and I was feeling a lot of pressure because I felt very sure I was going to receive a diagnosis at some near future point. So I basically wanted to put all the pressure in my head, everything I knew about the world into a series of four paintings, basically do them, in effect, before I died, or at least that’s what I was afraid of having happen to me.

Anyway, this is Earth─there’s references to the kachinas, the early Hopi spiritualities. There’s the little grey image towards the top of a cowboy riding a bull. It’s very difficult to see. I was thinking of things that move the earth around, so there’s an ant in the upper left-hand area and then there’s a bulldozer in the lower right-hand area. I was thinking of things like architecture and ideas of architecture, intuitive ideas of architecture, so there a rib cage and then there’s a bridge, I’m thinking of the similarities between the two.

Narrator: In late 1988, Wojnarowicz was—as he had anticipated—diagnosed as having HIV.