Central to Silano’s project How to Disappear is the relationship between loss and desire, death and ambition. The artist employs photographic fragmentation, layering, a variety of repeated cut-outs from erotic magazines in order to re-evaluate gay-eroticism specifically in the context that commences with the Stonewall riots up until the mid-1980s AIDS/HIV crisis. The images selected by the artist and found mostly in disco-era magazines are saturated in innocence, almost naivety. However, the vibrancy and euphoria of Silano’s color palette suggest a possibility of complete freedom.
It is just as impossible to recollect the names and faces of all the smiling models found in the magazines of the period, as it is to name all those who became victims of the AIDS/HIV crisis. The LGBT community, represented and disseminated through cheap magazine culture, is now a symbol of the era’s immeasurable loss. Our relationship with the past is constantly in flux and the interpretation of these images must not be regarded as permanent or regular. The artist is interested in the power of the photographic image, the relationship between people and the mass-produced image, as well as their role in shaping the modern LGBT identity.
