Enjoy AZT

Azidothymidine (or AZT), the first antiretroviral drug developed to treat HIV/AIDS, was approved for use in the general population by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 1987—by which point tens of thousands of Americans had already perished from the disease. Its cost inhibitive to many and its side effects harrowing at best, AZT was still the only solution to date, and AIDS activists were furious at the glacial speed of advancement in the treatment of the deadly disease while the one developer of the approved drug profited enormously from its use.


The two designers of this broadsheet had been involved from the beginning with various AIDS advocacy groups in New York City. Finkelstein, an original member of the anonymous collective Silence = Death Project, was also one of the designers of their eponymous first poster (1986) and AIDSGATE (1987) that followed it, as well as a co-founder of Gran Fury, the design collective that was the propaganda arm of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, founded 1987). He worked together with Gagliostro on this indelible appropriation of the Coca-Cola logo as a rallying cry for a protest at the National Institute of Health that was to take place on May 21, 1990. According to the Los Angeles Times (May 21, 1990), more than 60 activists were arrested at the NIH that day protesting greater access to better medicines for those suffering from HIV and AIDS.