ACCESS = LIFE

As part of World AIDS Day 2022, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation invited the SF Poster Syndicate to lead a screen printing workshop to create posters for the San Francisco World AIDS Day March and Vigil, December 1, 2022. Megan Wilson collaborated with Christopher Statton to design the print Access = Life.

Christopher Statton and Megan Wilson’s collaboration Access = Life is an outgrowth of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power/ACTUP’s Silence = Death public education and advocacy campaign that began in the 1980’s. Using the same iconic pink triangle and text format, Access = Life highlights the current struggle for equity and access to treatments, healthcare, housing, healthy food, education, and community that are critical to everyone, but especially people living with stigmatized chronic diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Access = Life transitions from a bio-hazard sign to a red ribbon as organizing and education shift the perception of the disease, and as the image rotates it becomes more solid in color, reflecting the gains that have been made through the strength of grassroots activism.

The San Francisco Poster Syndicate grew out of the crisis around higher education– student debt and the abuse of adjunct faculty. Continuing the rich history of posters as a form of political messaging The Poster Syndicate creates and screen prints original political images. The collective prints the posters live at political actions, exhibitions, and on the street, and gives away the work in order to target a variety of current social/economic justice issues. The Poster Syndicate brings art and design to many different people's movements with the hope the message can be heard and seen by a greater audience.

World AIDS Day March and Vigil, December 1, 2022