SILENCE=DEATH

This poster was created as an effort by the SILENCE=DEATH Project, a group of gay men (most of whom were graphic designers), with the goal of raising awareness and promoting community organization concerning the AIDS epidemic. Despite its high mortality rate and clear rise in cases, public health and political officials in the early 1980s refused to speak about the disease or allocate resources to researching it until thousands had already died. Thousands of copies of this poster were plastered across New York City to attract attention to the crisis both within and outside the LGBTQ+ community. To stand out from close and far distances, the design is minimalistic and bold, letting its powerful imagery and text speak for themselves. 

The imagery in question is a single pink upright triangle, a reclamation of the upside down pink triangle used as a patch by the Nazi's to indicate homosexual prisoners during the Holocaust. Silence during the 1930s and 40s would have kept queer people safe, with their identities hidden, but the opposite became true as AIDS began to spread rapidly through the community, made worse by the shame and silence when it came to talking about the disease and how to prevent it. It was no longer in the queer community's best interest to be invisible, and the reclamation of a forced symbol of violent visibility emphasized the severity of the AIDS crisis and the importance of awareness and action in response to it. 

By placing these posters across the most populated city in the United States, the SILENCE=DEATH Project implicated the general public as a responsible party in this situation, invoking the power of the public sphere to call for the destigmatization of AIDS and for social and political organization in the name of saving the lives of themselves and their fellow citizens. It's easy to ignore a problem that one doesn't (or pretends not to) see, but the SILENCE=DEATH posters were one of the ways queer designers used their art to increase their community's visibility and challenge not only an historical visual language, but also the complicity of the public and those who had the power to enact change.