Avram Finkelstein: "Silence = Death" and the Image That Defined the AIDS Crisis
LGBTQ&A
Jeffrey Masters
4.7 • 708 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Silence = Death" has become the defining image of ACT UP and the AIDS crisis. Avram Finkelstein, co-creator of the Silence = Death poster and a founding member of ACT UP, takes us back to where it all began: how the image came together months before ACT UP was even formed, how the artist collective Gran Fury created the visual language of the AIDS crisis, and why he believes ACT UP was a far more radical group than history remembers.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Why is Reagan silent about AIDS? |
| 0:11.0 | What is really going on at the CDC, the FDA, and the Vatican? |
| 0:16.0 | Gays and lesbians are not expendable. |
| 0:18.0 | Use your power, vote, boycott, defend yourselves, turn anger, fear, |
| 0:23.6 | grief into action. Those words lie underneath the now iconic phrase silence equals death. |
| 0:31.6 | The poster with its upside-down pink triangle was a rallying cry and arguably one of the most recognizable and influential |
| 0:39.0 | works of protest art in history. It's become a defining image of Actup, but I think it's |
| 0:46.2 | worth noting that the poster itself, it pre-existed the organization. It was born out of weekly |
| 0:52.4 | dinners with Brian Howard, Oliver Johnston, Charles |
| 0:55.6 | Kraloff, Chris Leone, Jorge Sakharas, and Avram Finklstein. |
| 1:00.7 | The six men gathered to talk and figure out what does it mean to be gay in the age of AIDS. |
| 1:07.2 | Avram was one of the members of that group and is our guest today. |
| 1:15.6 | He eventually became a founding member of ACT UP, where he helped to push Silence Equals Death into the national consciousness. |
| 1:19.0 | Today, we talk about the creation of that first poster, about Abram's work with Grand |
| 1:24.1 | Fury, that's the artist collective that emerged in ActUp, and why he says |
| 1:28.5 | that Act Up was much, much more radical than we remember today. I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is |
| 1:35.8 | LGBTQNA with Abram Finklstein recorded last month at his home in New York. |
| 1:51.3 | So I'm going to begin in the 80s. |
| 1:55.9 | I know that your partner, Don, got sick in the early days of the crisis. |
| 1:59.0 | Was it 81 or so he started showing symptoms? |
| 2:04.9 | I would, I think 80, but I think actually 1979 probably is more accurate. I say 1980 because that's when my mother acknowledged or |
| 2:15.6 | saw that it was, he was immunocompromised. |
... |
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