David Wojnarowicz, Sex Series, 1988-89

Narrator: Printed in negative, images such as a tornado, cityscape, and train, are punctuated with circular insets containing cropped details, including pornographic imagery. This material was taken from Hujar’s porn collection, which he had discarded after his diagnosis, and Wojnarowicz saved. Reframed in this network of symbols, it becomes an affirmation of eroticism and intimacy as a vital form of human connection.
 
David Breslin: Wojnarowicz showed a selection of these works in Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, an exhibition that the artist Nan Goldin curated at Artists Space in Lower Manhattan.
 
Nan Goldin: I had just gotten out of the hospital. I was living near the hospital outside Boston.
 
I thought that I had been kind of isolated from my community and I thought I was going back to my community. And then I realized most of the people were dead or dying. So, when they asked me to curate a show, they didn't tell me what it should be about or any kind of frame for it. But, there were a lot of shows about AIDS. And that maybe mine would not be so important because there had already been a lot. And there hadn't been any! It still shocks me to think that.
 
So I asked all my friends to contribute something because I wanted it to be a community.
 
David Breslin: Goldin asked Wojnarowicz to write one of the catalog essays, which became the center of a controversy about NEA funding. If you’d like to hear about it, please tap to continue.