PLEDGES OF ALLEGIANCE: DIASPORA CLOUD

SPACE is proud to raise artist Vik Muniz ’s Pledges of Allegiance flag, Diaspora Cloud as part of Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance project. 

Muniz’s Diaspora Cloud features a cloud floating against a blue background, evoking a geographically and temporally dispersed public that nevertheless share a similar viewpoint. The flag cleverly cites Clouds, his Creative Time project from 2001. In the public art project, clouds were “drawn” over the Manhattan skyline by a crop-dusting plane re-worked for skywriting. Muniz uses the sky as a metaphor for the ephemerality of connection within a community.

Diaspora Cloud is part of Pledges of Allegiance, a serialized commission of sixteen flags created by sixteen acclaimed artists to reflect the current political climate. Paglen’s flag is the tenth installment of the series, which has has grown from two to eighteen partner locations since Creative Time initiated the project in June 2017. 

Photographer and mixed-media artist Vik Muniz is best known for repurposing everyday materials for intricate and heavily layered recreations of canonical artworks. Muniz works in a range of media, from trash to peanut butter and jelly, the latter used to recreate Andy Warhol’s famous Double Mona Lisa (1963) that was in turn an appropriation of Da Vinci’s original. Muniz’s Perfect Strangers is currently installed at the newly-opened 72nd Street subway station in New York City.

 The flag will be on view at 19 cultural institutions and universities across 16 states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Texas. 

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.