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.” 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.