Wojnarowitz’s work is featured in a new exhibition at MoMA along with his contemporaries from the Eighties New York downtown scene
Thirty-two years after his death, the mainstream art world is increasingly paying tribute to the legacy of artist, writer, activist and photographer David Wojnarowitz. The latest example of this is a new exhibition, In the Shadow of the American Dream, at MOMA from this month. Wojnarowitz’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.
Often coming from an outsider perspective and involved in marginalised queer communities, Comer says giving space to these voices is important now."If you’re a young queer kid, you want to enjoy a direct dialogue with your ancestors,” he argues. Paintings from Wojnarowitz, like 1987’s Fire, are important, while Machado’s Shrine is a moving time capsule of ephemera.
Wojnarowitz’s sometimes brutal, always passionate writing - now collected in volumes including his memoir Close to The Knives and diaries In the Shadow of the American Dream - gave him a way to loudly bang the drum for his community. “He was able to crystallise the facts on the ground, give a real time analysis of everything…but he also was able to do that while in relaying really resonant and searing personal experience,” says Comer.