“Vibrating in isolation”: Reviving work of a censored artist
LOUISVILLE – The last known mural of late artist David Wojnarowicz lies behind drywall and mirrors in a NULU apartment complex’s gym, but the Hite Institute is making a recreation of the work accessible in a public exhibit.
University of Louisville’s Hite Institute of Art and Design is presenting the recreated installation on March 20th at the Cressman Center, and it will be available for public viewing until May 2nd. The exhibit, “Missing: When East Village Artists Came to Main Street,” is focused on the revival of the Wojnarowicz piece and the 1985 Louisville art show where it originated.
The 1985 exhibit, called “The Missing Children Show,” took place at 600 East Main Street, a then-abandoned building that is now NULU’s The Billy Goat Apartments.
In addition to Wojnarowicz, the show included art from East Village artists, including Judy Glantzman, Rich Colicchio, Kiely Jenkins, Rhonda Zwillinger, and Futura 2000.
“The Missing Children Show” acted as a fundraiser for Kentucky's Child Victims’ Trust Fund in response to the 1983 disappearance of Ann Gotlib and a slew of kidnappings in the early ’80s. The trust fund, founded in 1984, is a state program that supports organizations addressing child abuse and neglect.
Wojnarowicz, a New York-based artist, is known for both his art and writings from the late ’70s until his death in 1992.
“I am standing among all of you waving my invisible arms and hands. I am shouting my invisible words…I am vibrating in isolation among you.”
The discovery of Wojnarowicz’s Louisville site-specific installation in 2022 was an exciting find for Mysoon Rizk, Ph.D., who has been studying Wojnarowicz for their entire academic career.
“I get excited about every eruption of information that helps build context around something that you can no longer access because it’s the past. It’s sometimes impossible to reconstruct or even understand some historical events… To me, it's about this artist I’ve been studying my whole career,” said Rizk, who teaches the history of modern and contemporary art at The University of Toledo.
The discovery of this piece allows those interested in Wojnarowicz and the era of his works to learn another layer, deepen understanding, and better interpret his imagery.
“He was an incredible artist because he was so complicated, and a lot of his imagery is so rich and full of detail, that it’s sometimes impossible to process it all,” Rizk said.
The artist’s early work expands upon broader queer and political themes and experiences, though he is highly known for his works telling the story of living with AIDS later in his life – what it was like watching his friends die of the disease, and the political violence in the way the epidemic was handled in the United States.
“There’s always a danger that David’s work will get misinterpreted…But I totally believe David’s work resonates in a way today that is just as relevant as at the time or maybe even more relevant,” Rizk said.
While Rizk wouldn’t say that Wojnarowicz was a doomsdayer per se, his work often shows a man who viewed society with an apocalyptic lens, whose world was barrelling to a crash.
Because of the way Wojnarowicz explored society and politics through his art, Rizk suggests that it could resonate even more dramatically today due to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, species extinction, and the constant waging of war.
“From David's perspective, natural cataclysms, could be a good thing because they took control of the world out of human hands and disrupted the human social order that was so oppressive," Rizk said.
Wojnarowicz may have been okay with the temporary aspect of his installation from the ’80s, Rizk said, but it’s those who know his work and are happy to learn it still exists who are bothered by it being covered.
While the covering of his work in the Louisville building is a blow to the art community, it is not the first time Wojnarowicz’s work has been hidden from the public. Even after his death, there have been multiple instances of Wojnarowicz’s work being censored.
In life, the artist was made to feel invisible, inconsequential, expendable for being queer in America, according to Rizk. Before and after his death, efforts have been made to show Wojnarowicz’s work as a response to him being cut from art shows and galleries.
“I am standing among all of you waving my invisible arms and hands. I am shouting my invisible words…I am vibrating in isolation among you. I am screaming but it comes out like pieces of clear ice…I am waving. I am waving my hands. I am disappearing. I am disappearing but not fast enough,” Wojnarowicz wrote in a collection of stories called “Memories That Smell Like Gasoline.”
The Louisville art scene is obscured – galleries hidden in buildings across the city, artists’ work painted on bricks between alleys, art shared through Instagram and word of mouth – but it is also loud.
With this new exhibit, the Hite Institute gives a voice to Wojnarowicz and lets the public see his work after experiencing so much censorship both during his life and posthumously.
“I find that when I witness diverse representation of ‘Reality’ on a gallery wall or in a book or a movie or in the spoken word or performance, that the larger the range of representations, the more I feel there is room in the environment for my existence, that not the entire environment is hostile,” Wojnarowicz wrote in his 1991 memoir, '“Close to the Knives.”
The exhibition will be open from March 20th to May 2nd at Cressman Center, 100 East Main St., on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The gallery opening will take place on Friday, March 20th, with a lecture and discussion from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. and a reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the center.
