A scarce and crucial document produced amongst the overlapping histories of art activism, the impact of the AIDS crisis on the culture industry and American society writ large, censorship, and sex panics.
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held November 16, 1989 - January 16, 1990. Organized by Nan Goldin, with text by Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz, Linda Yablonsky, and Cookie Mueller. Artists include David Armstrong, Tom Chesley, Dorit Cypis, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Jane Dickson, Clarence Elie-Rivera, Darrel Ellis, Allen Frame, Peter Hujar, Greer Lankton, Siobhan Liddell, Mark Morrisroe, James Nares, Perico Pastor, Margo Pelletier, Vittorio Scarpati, Jo Shane, Kiki Smith, Janet Stein, Tabboo! Stephen Tashjian, Shellburne Thurber, Ken Tisa, and David Wojnarowicz
Catalog for the landmark exhibition organized by Nan Goldin at Artists Space. It was the first exhibition to deal exclusively with AIDS and was the subject of national controversy after Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe’s respective artworks--and particularly Wojnarowicz’s catalog essay “Postcards from America: X-Rays from Hell”--were seized upon by right wing political figures to demonize and fearmonger over gay people and people with AIDS.
After Wojnarowicz and Goldin refused Artists Space director Susan Wyatt’s request to censor his essay describing the effect of AIDS on his body and community, the NEA rescinded the $10,000 grant Artists Space had received to produce the exhibition and catalog. The offense was that Wojnarowicz named names of those responsible for the government sanctioned mass death event of the AIDS crisis: he called Cardinal James O’Connor a “fat cannibal from that house of walking swastikas up on fifth avenue” who supressed the circulation of safer sex information, and described his fantasy to “douse [Senator Jesse] Helms with a bucket of gasoline and set his putrid ass on fire.”