Editing David Wojnarowicz (section)

==Biography==
Wojnarowicz was born in [[Red Bank, New Jersey]], where he and his two siblings and sometimes their mother were physically abused by their father, Ed Wojnarowicz. Ed, a Polish-American merchant marine from Detroit, had met and married Dolores McGuinness in Sydney, Australia, in 1948 when he was 26 and she was 16.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/david-wojnarowicz-history-keeps-awake-at-night/ |title=Howl Sky |publisher=Sydney Review of Books |access-date=2020-12-05}}</ref> After his parents' bitter divorce, Wojnarowicz and his siblings were kidnapped by their father and raised in Michigan and Long Island. After finding their young, Australian-born mother in a New York City phone book, they moved in with her.<ref name="NYT 2010-12-10">{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/arts/design/11ants.html |title=As Ants Crawl Over Crucifix, Dead Artist Is Assailed Again |first=Holland |last=Cotter |work=The New York Times |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001212023/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/arts/design/11ants.html |date=December 10, 2010 |archive-date=October 1, 2017 |access-date=February 7, 2018 }}</ref> During his teenage years in Manhattan, Wojnarowicz worked as a [[Street prostitution|street hustler]] around Times Square. He graduated from the [[High School of Music & Art]] in Manhattan.<ref name="NYT obit"/> By 1971, at age 17, Wojnarowicz was living on the streets full time, sleeping in [[halfway house]]s and squats.<ref>{{cite web|title=David Wojnarowicz|url=https://www.theartstory.org/artist/wojnarowicz-david/}}</ref>

After a period outside New York, Wojnarowicz returned in the late 1970s and emerged as one of the most prominent and prolific members of an [[avant-garde]] wing that used mixed media as well as graffiti and street art. His first recognition came from stencils of houses afire that appeared on the exposed sides of East Village buildings.

Wojnarowicz completed a 1977–1979 photographic series on [[Arthur Rimbaud]], did stencil work and collaborated with the band [[3 Teens Kill 4]], which released the independent [[EP (music)|EP]] ''No Motive'' in 1982. He made autonomous [[super 8 mm film|super-8 films]] such as ''Heroin'' and ''Beautiful People'' with bandmate Jesse Hultberg, and collaborated with filmmakers [[Richard Kern]] and Tommy Turner of the [[Cinema of Transgression]]. He exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries and New York City landmarks, notably [[Civilian Warfare Gallery]], [[Ground Zero Gallery NY]], Public Illumination Picture Gallery, [[Gracie Mansion Gallery]], and [[Hal Bromm|Hal Bromm Gallery.]]

Wojnarowicz was also connected to other prolific artists of the time, appearing in or collaborating on works with [[Nan Goldin]], [[Peter Hujar]], [[Luis Frangella]], [[Karen Finley]], [[Kiki Smith]], [[James Romberger]], [[Marguerite Van Cook]], [[Ben Neill]], Marion Scemama,<ref>[https://cs.nyu.edu/ArtistArchives/KnowledgeBase/index.php?title=Scemama,_Marion Marion Scemama]{{Dead link|date=October 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> and Phil Zwickler. 

In early 1981, Wojnarowicz met the photographer [[Peter Hujar]], and after a brief period as lovers, came to see Hujar as his great friend and mentor. Weeks after Hujar died of AIDS on November 26, 1987,  Wojnarowicz moved into his loft at 189 2nd Avenue.  He was soon diagnosed with AIDS himself<ref name="NYT 2010-12-10" />  and, after successfully fighting the landlord to keep the lease, lived the last five years of his life in Hujar's loft. Inheriting Hujar’s dark room—and supplies like rare [[Agfa paper|Portriga Rapid paper]]—was a boon to Wojnarowicz's artistic process. It was in this loft that he printed elements of his ‘Sex Series’ and an edition of “Untitled (Buffalos)”. 

Hujar's death moved Wojnarowicz to create much more explicit activism and political content, notably about the social and legal injustices related to the government response to the AIDS epidemic.<ref name="NYT obit" /> He collaborated with video artist [[Tom Rubnitz]] on the short film ''Listen to This'' (1992), a critique of the Reagan and Bush administrations' homophobic responses and failure to address the crisis. The film was shown at [[MoMA]]'s 2017-18 exhibit ''Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983.''<ref name = moma>{{cite web | title = Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983, Oct 31, 2017–Apr 8, 2018 | website = Museum of Modern Art | url = https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3824 | access-date = 28 Jan 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = Club 57 – Tom Rubnitz | date = December 4, 2017 | work = Arts in New York City – Hunter College | last = Paucar | first = Samantha | url = https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/gillespie17/2017/12/04/club-57-tom-rubnitz/ | access-date = 28 Jan 2023}}</ref>

In 1985, Wojnarowicz was included in the [[Whitney Biennial]]'s so-called ''Graffiti Show.'' In the 1990s, he sued and obtained an injunction against [[Donald Wildmon]] and the [[American Family Association]] on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York [[Artists Authorship Rights Act (New York)|Artists' Authorship Rights Act]].<ref>See ''Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association'', 745 F.Supp 130 (1990).</ref>

Wojnarowicz's works include ''Untitled (One Day This Kid...)'', ''Untitled (Buffalo)'', ''Water'', ''Birth of Language II'', ''Untitled (Shark)'', ''Untitled (Peter Hujar)'', ''Tuna'', ''Peter Hujar Dreaming/Yukio Mishima: St. Sebastian'', ''Delta Towels'', ''True Myth (Domino Sugar)'', ''Something From Sleep II'', ''Untitled (Face in Dirt)'', and ''I Feel a Vague Nausea''.

Wojnarowicz also wrote two memoirs in his lifetime including ''Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration'', discussing topics such as his troubled childhood, becoming a renowned artist in New York City, and his AIDS diagnosis <ref name="Reference1980sclass">{{Citation |year=2008 |first=Lucy |last=Sumners |publisher=[[University of Rhode Island]] |title=AIDS Art: Activism on Canvas }}</ref> and ''Memories that Smell like Gasoline.'' ''Knives'' opens with an essay about his homeless years: a boy in glasses selling his skinny body to the pedophiles and creeps who hung around Times Square. The heart of ''Knives'' is the title essay, which deals with the sickness and death of Hujar, Wojnarowicz's lover, best friend and mentor, "my brother, my father, my emotional link to the world". In the final essay, "The Suicide of a Guy Who Once Built an Elaborate Shrine Over a Mouse Hole", Wojnarowicz investigates the suicide of a friend, mixing his own reflections with interviews with members of their shared circle.<ref name="guard-2016">{{Cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/13/david-wojnarowicz-close-to-the-knives-a-memoir-of-disintegration-artist-aids-activist|title=David Wojnarowicz: still fighting prejudice 24 years after his death|last=Laing|first=Olivia|date=12 May 2016|website=The Guardian|access-date=28 March 2021}}</ref> In 1989, Wojnarowicz appeared in [[Rosa von Praunheim]]'s widely acclaimed film ''[[Silence = Death (film)|Silence = Death]]'' about gay artists in New York City fighting for the rights of AIDS sufferers.

Wojnarowicz died at home in Manhattan on July 22, 1992, at the age of 37, from what his boyfriend Tom Rauffenbart confirmed was AIDS.<ref name="NYT obit"/>  

After his death, photographer and artist [[Zoe Leonard]], a friend of Wojnarowicz, exhibited a work inspired by him, ''Strange Fruit (for David)''.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2008-03-02 |title=Finding the Right Darkness |language=en |work=Frieze |issue=113 |url=https://www.frieze.com/article/finding-right-darkness |access-date=2023-02-11 |issn=0962-0672}}</ref>