The dA-Zed guide to David Wojnarowicz
As an exhibition of his most famous and arresting photographs opens in New York, we delve into the life and times of the American provocateur whose work continues to resonate
Text by Sam Moore, published 6 October 2025 for Dazed
There’s a spark to the art of David Wojnarowicz, the prolific visual artist, writer and Aids activist. His work so often feels alive, with possibility, with danger, and sometimes with fear. Whether in one of his most famous images, in which a herd of buffalo are tumbling down a cliff, or street art murals like The Missing Children Show (1985), where an exploding house is flanked by a viewfinder that stares down a series of cadavers, with Earth lingering above in orbit, an uncaring sentinel.
Now, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art is preparing to exhibit a series of Wojnarowicz’s most iconic images, Arthur Rimbaud in New York (1990), in which the artist and a collection of friends were photographed throughout New York, wearing masks of the French poet’s face. This comes alongside a new publication edited by the exhibition’s curator, Antonio Sergio Bessa, with new writing on Wojnarowicz alongside Rimbaud in New York. Rimbaud captures the core of Wojnarowicz’s artistic process: a sense of collaboration and artistic community; a formal inventiveness, where the artist does a lot with a little; and a keen, politically-charged eye, which here casts itself over the transformations of New York and the artist’s own childhood.
Wojnarowicz’s art drew on the narratives of his own life, the political landscape in which he found himself, and the artistic community of which he was a part. With a lo-fi, punk aesthetic and a refusal to look away from the world around him, his art continues to galvanise, challenge, and frighten in equal measure, even decades after his death.
A IS FOR AMERICA
Despite his travels to Europe – even going to Paris with the intent of living there in 1978 – America is inescapable in the art of David Wojnarowicz. Whether railing against the politics of his time, or creating imagery that challenged images and ideas of Americana, Wojnarowicz’s art is constantly grappling with the contradictions and violence of life and death in the United States
B IS FOR BUFFALOS
If there’s an image by Wojnarowicz that you recognise, even if you think you know nothing about the artist, then it’s Untitled (Buffalos) (1988-89). It’s been used on the cover of the U2 single “One”, and as a poster for Ari Aster’s film Eddington (2025). Wojnarowicz’s original image comes from a diorama in the Smithsonian of buffalo being herded off a cliff, plummeting to their death (a native American hunting method). Taken in the years following the artist’s Aids diagnosis, it becomes a critique of his country’s mistreatment of those who contracted the disease.
C IS FOR CINEMA OF TRANSGRESSION
Wojnarowicz was a constant collaborator, creating work alongside other artists in the East Village avant-garde; people like Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin, and Kikki Smith. He appeared in films by Richard Kern and directed alongside Tommy Turner, his creative impulses always searching for new outlets. And so it’s no wonder that he would also find himself involved in the Cinema of Transgression: low-budget, experimental films designed to shock.
D IS FOR DEATH
The spectre of death looms large in Wojnarowicz’s work. His buffalo are frozen on an inevitable descent to the grave; some of his most famous, unsettling images are of friends in their final moments, and in a comic book project he worked on with the artist James Romberger, sex and death are intertwined as two bodies together create a bizarre, violent moment of flesh coming apart. Death was everywhere in Wojnarowicz’s life, and would serve as a major catalyst in his work. Yet whenever he looks at death, he always seems to be daring it to look back at him….
Full article on Dazed
David Wojnarowicz: Arthur Rimbaud in New York is running at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art until 18 January 2026.