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Gran Fury focused his art to emanate the his activism mainly to make awareness to the leading causes of AIDS and to focus on what does not cause AIDS. His artwork was one that I would describe as a message within an illusion. At first what his work may seem like is a mere simplistic statement that has little impact, but it is when we spend time focusing on what the art and message is really trying to portray do we see the greater impact it can cause. As a girl who's family has had a history of AIDS and death caused by AIDS, I find his artwork to move me to really think about it.

AIDS had always been a topic in my family we never discussed even though we had someone close to us die from it. Everyone kept silent about how my uncle contracted AIDS that it became a mystery to my cousins and I because all we knew was that he was gay and that was that. The silence about the topic was unimaginably thick. One of Fury's most well known pieces of artwork was his , "SILENCE=DEATH graphic that came to define AIDS/HIV activist movement in the 1980s and the early 1990" (d'Addario).

Keeping silent the causes and effects of something as serious and life-threatening as AIDS is almost as bad as keeping silent about the fact that you have this disease and still sleep with your partner. Another one of Fury's pieces was a poster of three couples kissing. One being a straight interracial couple, another a gay couple and the last a lesbian couple. Fury used this to describe what his banner said, "Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed and Indifference Do". Back around the time people like Magic Johnson were being infected by this disease we knew little to nothing about it and we thought that it was mainly things such as a same-sex couple could contract AIDS through kissing even though neither were infected. It sheds to light that being in a same-sex relationship and sharing intimacy like straight couples do, does not contract the AIDS virus like they were told back then.

The theme that I have noticed when talking to many people about AIDS and its affects is that "if you are gay or take drugs you can get AIDS" without any kind of factual information or further explanation on the vague answer. Recently the topic of marriage equality was passed by the Supreme Court in June of 2015 making many right winged people upset about the fact and protesting with signs saying things such as "God Hates Fags" or "Gays WILL Burn in Hell" etc. As a Christian woman who believes in loving everyone like Jesus did, I found this absolutely appalling. Who are we to say that people who go against things we are taught and tell them that they are hated by God or that they are definitively going to burn in hell? Was it not by the grace of God that we are now saved from our own sin? It's disgusting to see, but the photos of each protest shows a greater picture, love does trump hate.

Between the silence of people who are then quick to point the finger for the cause of AIDS to be from homosexual intimate relationships and drugs, that simply, and the religious hate against the LGBTQ+ community it has one thing that sticks out for me, same sex relationships are negative based. Yes, we have made incredible strides into showing both support and tolerance for the community there are still many who believe that "AIDS is caused by gay people" is what my grandmother would call it. Yet, both of these images though different in sight have a similar message of love trumping hate.


Gary Fury's AIDS Activism

It's All About Love