By Nico Salazar

The Silence = Death Image was created by a group of friends that were outraged at the government’s disproportionate response to the aids epidemic. These friends joined the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and grew to form the Gran Fury art collective. The central pink triangle in the Silence = Death image was an easily recognizable symbol to the queer community in the 80s. It is a reference to how homosexual men were branded in the Nazi death camps during World War 2. In the image it is presented with a twist, the triangle is flipped, alluding to how it was reclaimed in the 1970’s gay liberation movement. The strength of this graphic lies in its ability to take something as simple as a triangle and have it call on so much history. Contrarily, ACT UP’s power lied in their ability to be unignorable, their disruptive and theatrical displays caught the attention of not only New York City but the entire country. I believe that the tools used by ACT UP and Gran Fury are excellent models for modern protest and protest art respectively.