About Face: David Wojnarowicz, Queer Symbolism, and the Threat of Censorship

by Hugh Ryan

Who says when art crosses the line? When the National Portrait Gallery opened its first queer exhibit, the 2010 Hide/ Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the curators expected controversy. They didn’t expect the controversy would center around an obscure, 11-minute film by the late David Wojnarowicz. A Fire in My Belly would be removed from the exhibition. Writer Hugh Ryan revisits this controversy, interviewing the exhibition curators and examining A Fire in My Belly against Wojnarowicz’s body of work. According to Ryan, “On the surface, the story of A Fire In My Belly seemed like a fable about the futility of censorship and the hydra-headed nature of resistance. There was just one David Wojnarowicz didn’t exactly make A Fire In My Belly, at least, not the version that was shown at Hide/Seek.” Hugh Ryan is the author of When Brooklyn Was Queer  (St. Martin's Press, 2019). Ryan is the recipient of the 2016-2017 Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar fellowship at the New York Public Library, and a 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Non-Fiction Literature. He is the founding director of The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, a 2016 Curatorial Fellow in Ira Sachs' Queer / Art / Mentorship program, and an advisory board member for A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking.

Kindle Edition

Published November 9, 2020

About the author

Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator. His new book, THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION, is a queer history of the prison that was once in Greenwich Village. His first book, WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors' Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He was honored with the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association, and residencies or fellowships from Yaddo, The Watermill Center, the NYPL, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2019-2021, he worked on the Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in U.S. History curricular materials for the NYC Department of Education.