Silence = Death

In the late 1980s the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP plastered New York City with posters reading Silence = Death. The posters repurposed the pink triangle, the symbol Nazis had used to identify “known homosexuals” in concentration camps. Silence = Death was meant to protest public and government indifference to the growing AIDS epidemic: ‘silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people, then and now, must be broken as a matter of our survival.’

Today we must not be silent on discriminatory laws targeting the LGBTQ community, and the ready access to guns that enabled the deadliest mass shooting in United States history this past Sunday. I created these posters in the Analog Research Lab to both acknowledge where we come from, without the sacrifice of generations before us and groups like ACT UP, we wouldn’t have marriage equality today, and to remind us #WeAreOrlando.