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Memories That Smell like Gasoline

Brief Description
Wojnarowicz is a spokesman for the unspeakable. New York Magazine David Wojnarowicz, one of the most provocative artists of his generation, explores memory, violence, and the erotism of public space all under the spectre of AIDS. Here are David Wojnarowicz's most intimate stories and sketches, from... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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David Wojnarowicz, one of the most provocative artists of his generation, explores memory, violence, and the erotism of public space all under the specter of AIDS.

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Wojnarowicz is a spokesman for the unspeakable. New York Magazine

David Wojnarowicz, one of the most provocative artists of his generation, explores memory, violence, and the erotism of public space all under the spectre of AIDS.

Here are David Wojnarowicz's most intimate stories and sketches, from the full spectrum of his life as an artist and AIDS activist. Four sections—'Into the Drift and Sway', 'Doing Time in a Disposable Body', 'Spiral', and Memories that Smell like Gasoline—are made of images and indictments of a precocious adolescence, and his later adventures in the streets of New York. Combining text and image, tenderness and rage, Wojnarowicz's Memories that Smell like Gasoline is a disavowal of the world that wanted him dead, and a radical insistence on life.

The new and revised edition features a foreword by Ocean Vuong and a note from the editor, Amy Scholder.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781643622712

Publisher: Nightboat Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 22 July 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: Nightboat Books

Illustration: color and black & white watercolors

Contributors:

  • Foreword by Ocean Vuong

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 127.0mm

Height: 203.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 96

About the Author

David Wojnarowicz was an accomplished artist, writer, and activist, born September 14, 1954. He came to prominence in New York in the 1980s, part of a cohort of East Village artists including Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith, and Peter Hujar. His work from the graffiti that first brought him recognition in his teens to the photography and films produced before his AIDS-related death at the age of thirty-seven centre his experience on the margins of American society. His multi-media artworks and political advocacy were the focus of a Whitney retrospective, which named both as signs of his 'radical possibility'.

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