Gregg Bordowitz is an award-winning artist, writer, and activist. His work is the subject of a traveling retrospective spanning thirty years of activity. The exhibition is titled I Wanna Be Well—Organized by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College. Curated by Stephanie Snyder. The exhibition was previously presented at the Art Institute of Chicago, organized by Robyn Farrell and Solveig Nelson. His films – including Fast Trip, Long Drop (1993); A Cloud in Trousers (1995); The Suicide (1996); Habit (2001); Gimme Danger (2018) and Only Idiots Smile (2018) – have shown internationally in screenings and exhibitions at museums including: The New Museum, NY; Artist Space, NY; TATE Modern, UK; MoMA, NY; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Bordowitz is the author of many books, including: The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986–2003, (MIT 2006); Glenn Ligon: Untitled (I Am a Man) (Afterall 2018); General Idea Imagevirus (Afterall 2010); Volition (Printed Matter 2013); and Tenement (MoMA PS1 2016).
In addition, Bordowitz has published numerous catalog and journal essays on art, literature, AIDS, and their intersections. Bordowitz was a member of the groundbreaking AIDS activist group ACT UP, and a founding member of the 1980’s video/film collectives Testing the Limits and Diva TV. In 2006, Bordowitz received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art journalism from the College Art Association, and he is also the recipient of a Rockefeller Intercultural Arts Fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. A long-time faculty member of the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Bordowitz is the Director of the Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
