Avram Finkelstein is an artist, writer, gay rights activist, and member of the AIDS

AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 art collective Gran Fury

Gran Fury

Gran Fury was an activist/artist collective that came together in 1988. They took the name Gran Fury as it was the specific Plymouth model used by the New York Police Department, for unmarked police cars. The name was also meant to reference their anger about the AIDS pandemic...

.

Finkelstein describes himself as a "red diaper baby

Red diaper baby

Red diaper baby describes a child of parents who were members of the United States Communist Party or were close to the party or sympathetic to its aims.-History:...

", raised by leftist

Left-wing politics

In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 parents who encouraged him to develop an interest in radical politics. He began by protest

Protest

A protest is an expression of objection, by words or by actions, to particular events, policies or situations. Protests can take many different forms, from individual statements to mass demonstrations...

ing the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 in the 1960s, and has worked on many activist causes, including The Student Mobilization Committee, The Poor People's Campaign, The Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, and was a founding member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT-UP

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power is an international direct action advocacy group working to impact the lives of people with AIDS and the AIDS pandemic to bring about legislation, medical research and treatment and policies to ultimately bring an end to the disease by mitigating loss of health and...

. In 1986, Finkelstein was co-founder of the group Silence=Death Project, which created the "Silence=Death" anti-AIDS logo to combat institutional silence surrounding homophobia and HIV/AIDS, later donated to ACT-UP. In 1994, in preparation for the Gay Games

Gay Games

The Gay Games is the world's largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBT athletes, artists, musicians, and others. It welcomes participants of every sexual orientation and every skill level...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, he wrote a tract

Tract (literature)

A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They are...

 for ACT-UP, entitled "Welcome to New York", which asked gay

Gay

Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 men and lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

s who attended the games and other festivities surrounding the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

Stonewall riots

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...

 to take action to stop the AIDS epidemic.

Finkelstein has covered art & culture for Artwrit, Italian Vogue, Dazed and Confused, Visionaire, Pride, Genre, Van and Dune. With Gran Fury, he collaborated on public awareness campaigns and public art projects for publications, museums and foundations including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Venice Biennale, ArtForum, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Creative Time, and The Public Art Fund. Finkelstein has been interviewed about art, activism and communication in the public sphere by publications including The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

and Interview., and spoken at Harvard, Exit Art, Fordham, RISD, MassArt, The School of Visual Arts and CUNY.