SILENCE=DEATH CO-FOUNDER ON HOW ONE POSTER CHANGED THE AIDS MOVEMENT

Brooklyn artist, writer and activist Avram Finkelstein co-founded both the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives (Photo courtesy of Avram Finkelstein)

Bugs' interview with Avram originally ran in Daily Xtra

Brooklyn artist, writer and activist Avram Finkelstein is a legend in the AIDS movement, for co-founding both the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives that changed the way the world looks at AIDS.

And while the simple catch phrase “Silence=Death” and the accompanying poster have become ubiquitous — a global anthem for AIDS activists — today Finkelstein reveals his Silence=Death collective had no idea its slogan would catch on like it did and come to symbolize a movement.

“Silence=Death was designed by a collective I formed with five other friends a year before ACT UP New York even formed,” Finkelstein says. “Our poster is closely associated with the movement, but we did not know we were surrounded by this community.”

The original catalyst for Finkelstein was the death from AIDS of his boyfriend Don Yowell in late 1984. “I come from a leftist background and politicized family, so I suggested we do a poster, and we ended up with Silence=Death,” he says. “We worked for six months on that poster. It is highly massaged. At the time, William F Buckley was calling for the tattooing of HIV-positive people, and we were outraged by that. By trying to picture what a tattoo would look like [on a poster], we decided we needed an abstract image, and that’s how we ended up with the pink triangle. Once people embraced [the poster], we referred to it — with gallows humour — as ‘the happy face of the ’80s.’”