David Wojnarowicz

David Michael Wojnarowicz was one of the most vital artist-writer-activists to emerge from New York's East Village scene.

David Wojnarowicz experienced abuse during his childhood in suburban New Jersey, Michigan and Long Island. He spent his teenage years hustling and sometimes being homeless on the streets of New York City. He barely finished high school before hitchhiking and riding freight trains across the country. He also lived in Paris for a time before settling permanently in New York in 1979.

His first notable work was the photographic series Arthur Rimbaud in New York (1978–79), in which he and his friends wore masks depicting the 19^(th)-century French poet while exploring the city's attractions — Coney Island, Times Square, the subway system and nightclubs. Critics have described the series as fusing Rimbaud's identity with the city's underground life, enabling Wojnarowicz to be both himself and someone else simultaneously.

Wojnarowicz became part of the East Village "anti-space" gallery scene that broke open in 1981. He spray-painted stencilled imagery on cars and walls, worked briefly as head busboy at the club Danceteria, and formed the band 3 Teens Kill 4 with friends, releasing the record No Motive in 1982. He collaborated widely across disciplines — with visual artists on the illegal Pier 34 installations, with filmmakers like Richard Kern and Marion Scemama, and later on a graphic novel with James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook.

A turning point came in 1980 when he met photographer Peter Hujar, who became his mentor and, in his words, "like the parent I never had." Hujar encouraged him to pursue art as a way of preserving an authentic counter-history. Through the 1980s, Wojnarowicz had 19 solo exhibitions and nearly 200 group shows, including two Whitney Biennials (1985 and 1991).

Hujar's death from HIV-related illness in 1987 was a devastating loss, and Wojnarowicz and his partner, Tom Rauffenbart, were diagnosed with HIV soon after. He came to see the AIDS crisis as a failure of political leadership and became an active member of ACT UP and the artist collective Gran Fury.

His work increasingly incorporated text, photography, and pointed political content — confronting figures like Cardinal John O'Connor, Senator Jesse Helms, and Reverend Donald Wildmon. His 1989 essay "Postcards from America: X-Rays from Hell" triggered a National Endowment for the Arts funding controversy, and in 1990 he successfully sued the American Family Association after it misrepresented his art as pornography, winning a symbolic $1 judgment.

He also published two memoirs, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration (1991) and Memories That Smell Like Gasoline (1992).

David Wojnarowicz died of HIV/AIDS-related illness on July 22, 1992, at age 37, surrounded by loved ones.