Sarah K. Swann

We’re Bringing Our Dead to Your Door

We’re Bringing Our Dead To Your Door Acrylic on canvas Sarah Marris-Swann 2022 In October of 1992 the AIDS epidemic had been going on for about 10 years. 40 million people had been infected. Research into treatments had basically stalled. There was no cure in sight. More and more people were getting sick and dying, and those they left behind felt abandoned and ignored by the government. On October 2, 1992, about 150 people, many of them members of ACT UP, met in D.C., carrying their beloved persons' ashes in a variety of different kinds of vessels. They chanted: “We're bringing our dead to your door. We won't take it anymore.” Mounted police on horses attempted to barricade the protesters from reaching the White House, but they pushed their way through. When they reached the fence, one by one they began to hurl the ashes of their loved ones onto the White House lawn, in an act of “enraged grief.” 30 years after the Ashes Action, lack of access to equitable and humane healthcare is still a major problem that plagues our healthcare system and hurts people every day…but to move forward we have to be able to turn our grief into action. The full story can be found on Radiolab: http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/ashes-lawn/

We’re Bringing Our Dead To Your Door
Acrylic on canvas
Sarah Marris-Swann
2022
Sold

In October of 1992 the AIDS epidemic had been going on for about 10 years. 40 million people had been infected. Research into treatments had basically stalled. There was no cure in sight. More and more people were getting sick and dying, and those they left behind felt abandoned and ignored by the government. On October 2, 1992, about 150 people, many of them members of ACT UP, met in D.C., carrying their beloved persons’ ashes in a variety of different kinds of vessels. They chanted: “We’re bringing our dead to your door. We won’t take it anymore.”

Mounted police on horses attempted to barricade the protesters from reaching the White House, but they pushed their way through. When they reached the fence, one by one they began to hurl the ashes of their loved ones onto the White House lawn, in an act of “enraged grief.”

30 years after the Ashes Action, lack of access to equitable and humane healthcare is still a major problem that plagues our healthcare system and hurts people every day…but to move forward we have to be able to turn our grief into action.

The full story can be found on Radiolab:
http://www.wnycstudios.org/story/ashes-lawn/