Enjoy AZT (ACT UP)

Bullet Space, publisher

1985–present

Vincent William Gagliostro, artist

born 1954

Avram Finkelstein, artist

born 1952

Enjoy AZT (ACT UP), 1990–1991

Portfolio/Series title: Your House is Mine

Where object was made: New York, New York, United States

Material/technique: screen print

Dimensions:
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 584 x 508 mm
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 23 x 20 in

Credit line: Museum purchase

Accession number: 1994.0025.34

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Brosseau Center for Learning: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Access

AZT, or azidothymidine, was the first HIV/AIDS drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The writing included in this piece describes the frustrations users felt as the drug made many sick or did not work long-term. AZT was approved on March 19, 1987, in record time, only 19 weeks into the first and only human trial to test the drug. At the time it cost about $8,000 per year—equivalent to over $17,000 today.

Exhibition Label:
"Printed Art and Social Radicalism," Jun-2002, Stephen Goddard
The portfolio Your House is Mine was produced in the wake of the 1989 Tompkins Square Riots in New York City; the events surrounding the confrontation of police and radicals over the eviction of squatters in Lower East Side properties and the 300 homeless living in Tompkins Square Park.