What makes for “good” queer representation? It’s a question constantly debated today, recently sparked again over a controversial true-crime drama. And according to Jack Lowery, author of the 2022 book It Was Vulgar and It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art to Fight a Pandemic, the question was just as pressing for the artists behind some of the most iconic works associated with HIV/AIDS organizing in the late 1980s.

Lowery and I recently sat down to discuss Gran Fury, the artist collective that created some of the most iconic protest artwork of the AIDS crisis, including the Silence=Death poster adopted as a logo by ACT UP.