In 2026 AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a known and reasonably well understood condition, disproportionately affecting gay men. But during the 1980s and 90s there was a very different reaction to this affliction.
Between 1979 and 1981, a post-disco and new wave music era boomed in numerous major cities tied to social and sexual liberation in Western countries. This was especially the case in the US and the UK. However, on 3 July 1981, the New York Times published an article describing information about a“Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” misinforming the world about the new disease exclusive to gay men, then called GRID. This was the beginning of a large-scale epidemic, with a devastating death toll, surrounded by horrifying stigma.
In 1991, Freddie Mercury publicly confessed he had been suffering from this same mysterious disease for some time. The day after his confession, Mercury died. Suddenly, the mystery that surrounded the disease became more real than ever and it was truly time to act. In 1991, 1,150 died of AIDS and HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) in the UK. For context, the disease first appeared in the country in 1981.
Refusal from those in power to act had a huge impact. In the US, President Ronald Reagan refused to utter the word AIDS in the first four years of the crisis. As late as 1987, the US Congress banned the use of federal funds for AIDS prevention or for education. In the UK, the Thatcher government launched the ‘AIDS: Don’t Die of Ignorance’ campaign in 1986, creating advertisements and distributing brochures to every household, featuring morbid imagery such as tombstones, icebergs, and coffins in a monochromatic palette. These common design choices across Western countries, prioritizing imagery and emotion over health information, hindered the campaigns’ initial objectives while stigmatizing an already vulnerable community.
Like their government counterparts, activists knew that visual and material culture would be among the most effective tools for creating the change they demanded. But their artistic approach totally contrasted policy policymakers. A most famous activist campaign was founded in 1985. The “Silence = Death” project drew on activist art traditions like the Art Workers Coalition and the Guerrilla Girls, using bold, confrontational poster design to transform visual culture into a political weapon against AIDS-era silence and inaction.
Another use of art for activism was through craft, now known as craftivism. The most famous example was the AIDS Memorial Quilt, made by Cleve Jones of the NAMES Project. The Quilt consists of cloth panels, each measuring three by six feet, the size of an average grave plot, and commemorating one or more AIDS victims, sewn together to create a woven graveyard. To this day, the quilt continues to grow, with over 105,000 names memorialised. It clashed with the 1980s political campaign’s designs, as the quilt conveys warmth and comfort.
Artists increasingly became the most visible yet vulnerable faces of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s
Klaus Nomi, the avant-garde singer who fused opera, new wave and electronic music, was among the first to die, his death emblematic of how quickly the epidemic cut through creative circles. Robert Mapplethorpe’s late photographs grow starker and more introspective, obsessively focused on the body, beauty, and endurance, as if recording what was about to disappear. After learning of his diagnosis, Keith Haring filled his final works with a direct visual language of illness, urgency, and care, incorporating the activist slogan “Silence = Death”. The list of artists who have died because of government inaction during the AIDS crisis is long, and the public mourning of these recognized faces was constant.
Artists’ and activists’ work in spite of government’s inaction, led to victims finally having access to treatment. In the US, in 1987, AZT became the first approved anti-HIV drug. Yet, it was also the most expensive, costing about $10,000 for a year’s supply, making it an inaccessible treatment.
Today, it is important to acknowledge that the fight is not over. In the UK in 2024, there were around 3,043 new HIV diagnoses, a 4 per cent decrease from 2023. In the U.S. In 2022, there were 31,800 estimated new HIV infections. Yet, this November 2025, the Trump Administration announced it will no longer commemorate World AIDS Day, stepping back from artists’ fight against governments’ silence over two decades. A reminder that no rights nor victories must be taken for granted.
“Freddie Mercury” by kentarotakizawa is licensed under CC BY 2.0.