On December 11, 2010 Gallery Aferro joined in expressing support for freedom of art and expression by screening David Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly. It is a cause which demands attention and which shows us the same daunting and opportunistic politics which played so viciously in the 1980s.
It is a cause that demands we all perform gestures in the face of it. So for David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujur and my own well-loved Michael ... I offer my own thoughts ...
There is nothing which makes us so human as our awareness of the coming of death. There is nothing which binds us to our fellows so fully as the longing and desire that is grief. When one is so honest as to reveal the substance of this unspeakable, un-writable condition - when one has the courage to forego the affectation of coolness and aplomb and to take the risk of revealing this most fragile, telling internal dialogue that is the knowing of the coming of death and the insatiable longing of grief – we’d best do well and offer our hearts to it. It is only in this profound generosity, this hospitality of the soul, that there can be any relief from the infinite solitude which is the awake human mind. If we are so mean, so limited in our hearts as to not make room for the grief of an-other – then we risk the oblivion of a failed humanity.
...
further reading and writing ...
" The 'Fire' man, Essay by Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post
CBC News Article on artist AA Bronson's response to Censorship of the Smithsonian Exhibit
Website for Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
Contact for United States House of Representatives
Contact info for the Senators of the 11th Congress
Contact the White House
Thursday, December 23, 2010
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