Almost 20 years after his death, a selection of films and readings to reconsider the artist's powerful work
This event presents a selection of films and readings to reconsider the artist David Wojnarowicz's powerful work in light of recent efforts to distort its intentions and legacy. Almost 20 years after his death from AIDS in 1992 at the age of thirty-seven, David Wojnarowicz has emerged as one of the most vital, restless and influential artists of the 1980s. His impassioned experiments in painting, writing, photography, sculpture, film, video, performance, collage, graphics and music have left an indelible legacy. Wojnarowicz's charged work, which is represented in Tate's Collection, remains a crucial, inspiring response to the mortality, decay and rage that defined his era. Wojnarowicz was also one of the art community's most passionate and articulate activists at the height of the AIDS crisis during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1990 the artist won a historic Supreme Court case, David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association. The courts sided with Wojnarowicz after he filed suit against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association, who copied, distorted and disseminated the artist's images in a pamphlet to speak out against the National Endowment of the Art's funding of exhibits that included art works by Wojnarowicz and other artists. Recently Wojnarowicz's work has returned to the centre of debates around culture and censorship. The artist's 1987 film A Fire in My Belly was removed from the exhibition 'Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture' at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. in November 2010 after pressure from several members of the U.S. Congress, Catholic League president William Donahue and conservative media outlets. This programme at Tate will include A Fire in My Belly plus Wojnarowicz's forceful and compelling collaboration with Ben Neill, Itsofomo (in the shadow of forward motion). Other material will be screened, in addition to readings of Wojnarowicz's acclaimed writings by local artists and writers.