Untied (Flag)

2009, textile patchwork with texts, 500 x 330 cm

Work in collaboration with Malin Pettersson Öberg

In our world the flag has always been a symbolic object, meant to represent and identify a certain people with its country, a nation with its state. It endorses a finite and simple meaning, by a finite shape and composition: three vertical stripes constituting a rectangle, the width double to its height, and by color code: blue and red for the city of Paris, surrounding white for the king and God. In “Untied (Flag)”, the plain color stripes are replaced by a complex and diverse patchwork of African fabrics. To this composition of stripes, a second composition is added, with fields containing names of beauty shops, travel agencies, hotels and bars in the French-African community. The logic of the flag as a symbol, where shape and meaning merge, is twisted twice and becomes an allegory.