ICA Presents Censored Wojnarowicz Video

David Wojnarowicz

A Fire In My Belly (Film In Progress) (1986-87)
Super 8mm film, black and white and color, silent, 13:06 minutes
Courtesy of The Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York and The Fales Library and Special Collections/ New York University

A Fire In My Belly Excerpt (1986-87)
Super 8mm film, black and white and color, silent, 7:00 minutes
Courtesy of The Estate of David Wojnarowicz and P.P.O.W Gallery, New York and The Fales Library and Special Collections/ New York University

In response to pressure from conservative politicians and religious organizations, on December 1, 2010, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC removed David Wojnarowicz's video, A Fire in My Belly, from the exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. In protest of this censorship, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) joins venues across the country by screening the video through the end of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition on February 13th, 2011.

ICA champions artistic freedom and opposes censorship. In 1988, ICA organized Robert Mapplethorpe's seminal exhibition, The Perfect Moment. Canceled by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and censored to some degree at each subsequent location, the exhibition was at the forefront of the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is sobering that, more than twenty years later, art is still removed from view on the basis of sexuality and in the name of religion. ICA applauds the Smithsonian for mounting the first exhibition ever to address the theme of homosexuality in a public American institution, but deplores that this gesture has been undermined by its acquiescence to conservative pressure and censorship.

Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly is about life and death, faith and suffering. It was made within the context of an AIDS crisis that, by the mid 1980s, was already pandemic. Like much of Wojnarowicz's work, the video is filled with disturbing imagery. Calls for its censorship revolve around an 11-second segment of ants crawling over a plastic and wood crucifix. By objecting to a use of the crucifix—an image that has always been a metaphor for pain and suffering in Western Art—such critics as William Donahue of the Catholic League, future House Speaker John Boehner, and future House Majority Leader Eric Cantor demonstrate the fundamental hatred and homophobia that prompted their objections. No complaint has been registered from visitors to the exhibition.

This is not the first time that ICA has presented the work of David Wojnarowicz, whose work was featured in the group exhibitions The East Village Scene (1984) and The Devil on the Stairs: Looking Back on the Eighties (1991), and was the subject of the 1985 solo exhibition Investigations 15: David Wojnarowicz: Painting and Sculpture (1985).

Further Statements:

Jonathan D. Katz

Co-curator of the National Portrait Gallery's Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

I curated, with David C. Ward of the National Portrait Gallery, the groundbreaking exhibition Hide/Seek. Sadly, I was not consulted when the Smithsonian elected to censor a work by David Wojnarowicz, and then redoubled that insult by referring to "AIDS victims" in their statement—employing the very victimizing locution Wojnarowicz fought with his dying breath to oppose. An exhibition explicitly intended to finally break a 21-year-old blacklist against the representation of same sex desire in America's major museums now, ironically, finds itself in the same boat. In 1989, Senator Jesse Helms demonized Robert Mapplethorpe's sexuality, and by extension, his art, and with little effort pulled a cowering art world to its knees. When will it be time for the decent majority of Americans to stand against a far-Right fringe that sees censorship as a replacement for dialog and debate?

This is a culture war we did not seek out, nor start. But appeasing tyranny has never worked and can never work, for tyranny wants only obedience, and blind obedience is antithetical to what this nation stands for. Were the men and women whose portraits grace the National Portrait Gallery able to take a stand, I have little doubt they would line up behind the separation of Church and State, enshrined in our Constitution, that this incident calls so painfully into question. Furthermore, they would readily agree that America's core value, also enshrined in our Constitution, is our freedom of speech. Art in general, and this kind of art in particular, is precisely a spur to conversation and to thought—something all civil society should support and celebrate. But when the Smithsonian, under pressure to be sure, starts bowing to its censors, it abrogates its charge as our National museum.

Over a century and a half ago, Walt Whitman wrote, in support of precisely the core values currently under threat:

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me...
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.

We sought to remove a veil and in opposing that move, our enemies have damaged our democracy once again. I pray it is not another 21 years before someone else tries to remove that veil again. I am sad for us all.

P.P.O.W Gallery, Guardians of the Wojnarowicz Estate

P.P.O.W and the Estate of David Wojnarowicz disagree with the Smithsonian's decision to withdraw the artist's 1987 film piece A Fire in My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition entitled Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. P.P.O.W has represented Wojnarowicz's work since 1988 and maintained a close working relationship with the artist until his death in 1992. The gallery now represents his estate.

On behalf of the estate, the gallery would like to offer the artist's words to illuminate his original intentions. In a 1989 interview Wojnarowicz spoke about the role of animals as symbolic imagery in his work, stating, "Animals allow us to view certain things that we wouldn't allow ourselves to see in regard to human activity. In the Mexican photographs with the coins and the clock and the gun and the Christ figure and all that, I used the ants as a metaphor for society because the social structure of the ant world is parallel to ours."

The call for the removal of A Fire in My Belly by Catholic League president William Donahue is based on his misinterpretation that this work was "hate speech pure and simple." This statement insults the legacy of Wojnarowicz, who dedicated his life to activism and the arts community.

In 1990 the artist won a historic Supreme Court case, David Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association. The courts sided with Wojnarowicz after he filed suit against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association, who copied, distorted, and disseminated the artist's images in a pamphlet to speak out against the NEA's funding of exhibits that included art works of Wojnarowicz and other artists. We are deeply troubled that the remarks, which led to the removal of David's work from Hide/Seek, so closely resemble those of the past. Wojnarowicz's fight for freedom of artistic expression, once supported by the highest court, is now challenged again. In his absence, we know that his community, his supporters, and the many who believe in his work will carry his convictions forward.

For full statements from Katz and P.P.O.W, as well as other institutions, and other information related to this controversy, please visit: www.hideseek.org

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