PLEDGES OF ALLEGIANCE: Untitled (FLAG 2)

Josephine Meckseper is a German-born, New York-based artist. She uses commercial forms of presentation to demonstrate inextricable influences of consumer culture on society. Meckseper melds the aesthetic language of modernism with the formal language of commercial display, combining them with images and artifacts of historical undercurrents and political protest movements.

Meckseper said of her work, “The flag is a collage of an American flag and one of my dripped paintings which resembles the contours of the United States. I divided the shape of the country in two for the flag design to reflect a deeply polarized country in which a president has openly bragged about harassing women and is withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol and UN Human Rights Council.

“The black and white sock on my flag takes on a new symbolic meaning in light of the recent imprisonment of immigrant children at the border.

“Let’s not forget that we all came from somewhere and are only recent occupants of this country – native cultures knew to took care of this continent much better for thousands of years before us. It’s about time for our differences to unite us rather than divide us.”

Artist Statement

Untitled (Flag 2) was conceived as an art work for Pledges of Allegiance in the spring of 2017, a project in which sixteen artists were invited by Creative Time to create works in the shape of a flag. There is a long tradition of artists working with the iconography of the flag to allow for new perspectives and interpretations of aesthetics, but also politics to enter a collective discourse. My contribution to Pledges of Allegiance comes out of this tradition.

For this project, I employed the technique of collage, superimposing multiple images rather than using a real flag. The most prominent element of the work is an image of my abstract drip painting entitled “Goodbye to Language,” which resembles a map of the United States and includes a striped sock. I divided the map shape and superimposed the painting onto a graphic design of a flag. Goodbye to Language takes its title from Jean-Luc Godard’s 2014 film “Adieu au Language,” a fractured, experimental work involving two couples both coming together and growing apart. The word “adieu,” in the French-speaking area of Switzerland, can mean both “hello” and “goodbye,” depending on the context of its use.

Within the public contexts of the organizations that Creative Time chose to partner with to display the work, I hope that it can contribute to the ongoing discussion of art’s role in society, who we are as a nation, what divides us, and what brings us together.

Josephine Meckseper’s Untitled (Flag 2) is on view July 3rd – July 31st, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– The Commons, in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1340 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS
– Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– Old Stone House, 336 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– SPACE, 536 Congress Street, Portland, ME
– Texas State Galleries, 233 West Sessom Drive, San Marcos, TX
– The Union for Contemporary Art, 2423 N 24th Street, Omaha, NE
– University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL
– Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ

Pledges of Allegiance is a nationwide public art project by Creative Time. The project is a serialized commission of sixteen flags, each created by acclaimed contemporary artists: Tania Bruguera, Alex Da Corte, Jeremy Deller, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ann Hamilton, Robert Longo, Josephine Meckseper, Marilyn Minter, Vik Muniz, Jayson Musson, Ahmet Ögüt, Yoko Ono, Trevor Paglen, Pedro Reyes, Rirkrit Tiravanija, ​and Nari Ward.

Each flag embodies art’s ability to channel political passion, providing a unifying symbol around which to unite, as well as a call-to-action for institutions nationwide to raise upcoming Pledges of Allegiance flags in solidarity with Creative Time. Pledges of Allegiance aims to inspire a sense of community among cultural institutions, beginning with an urgent articulation of the political demands of the moment. Each flag points to an issue the artist is passionate about or a cause they believe is worth fighting for, and speaks to how we might move forward collectively as a country. To inaugurate the project, Creative Time raised Marilyn Minter’s RESIST FLAG on the roof of its headquarters on Flag Day, June 14.

Pledges of Allegiance was originally conceived by Alix Browne and developed in collaboration with Cian Browne, Fabienne Stephan, and Opening Ceremony.