Thirty-two years after his death, the mainstream art world is increasingly paying tribute to the legacy of artist, writer, activist and photographer David Wojnarowicz. The latest example of this is a new exhibition, In the Shadow of the American Dream, at MOMA from this month. Wojnarowicz's work is featured along with his contemporaries from the eighties New York downtown scene including filmmaker Marion Scemama, Donald Moffett, Agosto Machado and painter Martin Wong.
“All of them are confronting the AIDS crisis,” says Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance at MoMA. “The Village was a war zone, for many reasons - for drugs, for AIDS, but also for a very severe form of gentrification where blocks worth buildings [were wiped out].” Comer has firsthand experience of Wojnarowicz's impact. “In 1989, I was at the New Museum [when] Jesse Helms censored the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition,” he recalls. “When we protested, David gave the most passionate speech. Everyone was just enraptured, listening to him. He was a really vital figure, a lightning rod.”
