From 1986 to Now: Lola Flash's Queer Portraits Mix Art With Activism

For more than three decades, Lola Flash has used her portraiture to explore the meaning of gender and sexual norms, but some of her earliest work concerned itself with documenting the AIDS crisis in New York City.

Born in Montclair, N.J., in 1959, Flash grew up in an era before TV shows like The L Word changed a queer teen's frame of reference. "I really didn't know I was gay," she told the writer Sarah Schulman in 2008. "I just thought I was, like, from Mars or something." After moving to Provincetown in the late 1980s, Flash found herself in the midst of a plague, and was documenting its ravages through her work as part of Art Positive, an affinity offshoot of ACT UP. "As an activist, and an alumnus of ACT UP, I have never lost sight of our continued global fight for justice, to challenge society's ignorance, and to find a cure," she said shortly after the election of Donald Trump. "It is the 21st century and AIDS is not over!"

All images courtesy of Lola Fash.