YOUR SILENCE WILL NOT PROTECT YOU
A Visual Tribute by Lola Flash

ABOUT THE WORK

Lola Flash, visionary photographer, artist, and Queer|Art Mentor and Trustee, has generously lended their time and talent to create the second annual Queer|Art Artist Edition. Inspired by their history with ACT UP and AIDS awareness activism with Gran Fury, Flash highlights the text, “Your Silence Will Not Protect You,” originated by writer, educator, and feminist Audre Lorde at the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,” in 1977. The powerful quote later served as the title of her posthumous collection of essays, speeches, and poems in 2017. This neon edition radiates connection between Lorde’s work and ACT UP’s seminal statement, “Silence=Death” and creates a clear throughline of queer liberation and activism from then to now—and onward into the future. Flash, in collaboration with LiteBrite Neon Studio, has created only 10 (ten) editions of this work, and only 5 (five) are left for purchase.

100% of proceeds after fabrication costs will benefit Queer|Art.

Please visit Queer|Art’s Storefront on 1stDibs.com to purchase this piece. Shipping information, sales tax, and additional purchase details are outlined on the sales page.

If you are interested in purchasing this artwork for donation to a certified beneficiary, please reach out to twilliams@queer-art.org for information on our discounted Pay-It-Forward program. Through this program, we aim to create greater access to the artwork, ensuring it has a good home at one of our grassroots orgs or nonprofit partners that share alignment with our community’s values.

HISTORY

In 1977, the Modern Language Association hosted the “Lesbian and Literature” panel in Chicago, IL, which convened moderator Julia Stanley, philosopher Mary Daly, author Judith McDaniel, poet Adrienne Rich, and feminist activist and writer Audre Lorde. Lorde, a self-proclaimed “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," delivered her paper, “The Transformation of Silence Into Action,” which powerfully details her personal reckoning with a breast cancer diagnosis. She describes the primal fear she experienced when confronted with her own mortality, along with the sense of empowerment she achieved through speaking up and seeking help. Lorde relates this prison of silence to the systemic struggles faced by women in a patriarchal society, by black women in a racist society, by lesbians in a homophobic society, and by those individuals who exist at the intersection of multiple axes of identity. She writes, “my silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.”

Ten years after Lorde debuted her now seminal essay, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) was formed. Created with the goal of raising awareness of the AIDS crisis, the grassroots collective employed direct political action to protest the government’s ignorance of the disease. In March 1987, ACT UP created an installation in the window of the New Museum’s Soho location, resulting in the iconic exhibition, “Let the Record Show…” As part of the exhibition, members of Gran Fury and the Silence=Death Project created the “SILENCE=DEATH” neon sign. The work “explores the tension between the stories we presume to be private and what happens when we finally say them out loud,” as Multi-Year QAM Mentor and Gran Fury member Avram Finkelstein reflects.

The convergence of these two references is where Lola Flash situates their first neon artwork, “Your Silence Will Not Protect You” (2022). By rendering Lorde’s enduring words in a typeface reminiscent of the “SILENCE=DEATH” design, Flash weaves together parallel narratives of queer histories. Their reinterpretation of archival fragments is particularly resonant for today, as we find ourselves in the midst of concurrent public health crises that disproportionately affect queer communities of color. Flash also sees echoes of Lorde’s arguments in the ongoing fight against Anti-Black racism and white supremacy, noting the equivalence of silence to complicity. In Lorde’s words, “the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation.” As a torch-bearer of queer legacies, an exercise in collaborative art making, and a benefit edition, Flash’s work reinscribes that very act of communal and self-revelation almost 50 years later.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lola Flash (they/them) is a Multi-Year Visual Art Queer|Art Mentor, and a member of Queer|Art’s Board of Trustees. Their early involvement in AIDS activism resulted in the iconic 1989 political art advertising campaign by Gran Fury: “Kissing Doesn’t Kill, Greed and Indifference Do,” where they were photographed kissing fellow Queer|Art Mentor Julie Tolentino. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide. They employ photography to challenge stereotypes and offer new ways of seeing that transcend and interrogate gender, sexual, and racial norms. Flash engages those who are often deemed invisible.

Flash has work included in important collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA, the Whitney, the Museum of the African American of History and Culture and the Brooklyn Museum. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective. Learn more about their work here.

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