Queer History is Poster History

It’s impossible to recognize queer poster history without acknowledging its roots in HIV/AIDS advocacy and organizing. Before alcohol companies were clamoring to pinkwash their brands each June, queer folks were using posters to fight for the lives and dignity of people living with HIV. 

Poster House is thrilled to welcome artist and activist Avram Finklestein for a wide-ranging conversation on his experiences as a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives. Learn more about the origins of these advocacy posters and their lasting impact from one of the artists behind the movement’s most iconic poster designs. Questions strongly encouraged!

Avram Finkelstein is an artist, writer, and activist, and a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives. His work has shown at MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Hirschhorn, the Shed, and the Metropolitan Museum, and is in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, the New Museum, the Metropolitan, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. He is featured in the artist oral history project at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, and his book for UC Press, After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images, was nominated for an International Center Of Photography Infinity Award in Critical Writing And Research, and is now available in paperback. He has written for Frieze, Art21, and OnCurating, been interviewed by The New York Times, Artforum, NPR, Slate, and Interview, and spoken at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and NYU.