En la sombra del sueño americano

True to his self-taught background, David Wojnarowicz defied the boundaries between languages, media and actions, and escaped univocal definitions: he was a painter, musician, photographer, writer, Super 8 filmmaker and decisive protagonist of the effervescent social and cultural environment of New York’s East Village in the 1980s. His visceral work is notable for its collaborative spirit – in fluid communion with others – but also for its rebelliousness. A member of the act-up collective, Wojnarowicz was an activist heavily involved in gay identity politics before and during the AIDS epidemic, an illness that deprived him of friendships and loves and even took him away in 1992, at the age of 37.

In this book, we see the behind-the-scenes scenes that are the protagonists of his most famous works, and there is the constant search of his body, which becomes more pronounced when he is diagnosed as hiv-positive. He is aware of having caught a virus that also embodies the worst of a sick society; one that increasingly marginalises and excludes dissidents and abandons them to their fate. En la sombra del sueño americano showcases the private record of a sensitive and committed Wojnarowicz, overwhelmed by the demands of survival, pursuing pleasure and freedom even when there is no more light at the end of the tunnel.