The Legacy of David Wojnarowicz

In conjunction with the release of the twentieth-anniversary edition of Brush Fires in the Social Landscape (Aperture, 2015), Aperture Foundation and the New York Public Library present a conversation on David Wojnarowicz’s artistic legacy. The artist’s use of photography, at times in conjunction with text and painting, was extraordinary, as was his unprecedented way of addressing the AIDS crisis and issues of censorship, homophobia, and narrative.

Contributors to the book Cynthia Carr and Gary Schneider will discuss Schneider’s working relationship with David Wojnarowicz. Schneider printed for Wojnarowicz. Artist Adam Putnam will discuss the ways in which Wojnarowicz has influenced his own work, followed by a conversation.

For more information, visit nypl.org.

Cynthia Carr is the author of three books, most recently Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz (2012), winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography and finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. Her previous books are Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America (2006) and On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century (1993/2008). Carr chronicled the work of contemporary artists as a Village Voice writer (with the byline C. Carr) in the 1980s and ’90s, publishing numerous articles on such figures as Marina Abramović, Karen Finley, and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Her work has also appeared in Artforum, the New York Times, Modern Painters, TDR: The Drama Review, and other publications. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007.

Adam Putnam was born and lives in New York City. He is an artist with a multifaceted practice who has, for many years, explored the boundary between performance and architecture. His work has been included in various exhibitions worldwide, including at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, the Second Moscow Biennale, the Busan Biennale, Art Statements at Art Basel, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum. Curatorial projects have included an exhibition of work by Martin Wong entitled Everything Must Go at P.P.O.W., New York, and Blow Both of Us at Participant Inc., New York. He is currently represented by P.P.O.W.

Gary Schneider was born in South Africa and lives and works in New York City. He has an MFA from Pratt Institute and is on the faculty of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. He has had solo exhibitions at venues including Artists Space, New York; Musée de L’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; International Center of Photography, New York; Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Sackler Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; and Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland. Aperture has published two books of Schneider’s work: Nudes (2005) and HandBook (2010). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.

Conceived and organized by Arezoo Moseni and now in its fifth year, events in the Art and Literature Series bring forth pollinations across the literary and visual arts, with readings and discussions by acclaimed artists, authors, and poets.

Image: David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (face in dirt), 1990 © The Estate of David Wojnarowicz, Courtesy P.P.O.W Gallery, New York