Creative Time unveiled its next project at its gala fundraiser on 3 May. For Pledges of Allegiance, to debut in New York this summer, the public-art body has invited 16 artists—including Yoko Ono, Robert Longo, Alex Da Corte and Ahmet Ögüt—to create customised flags addressing the current political climate.
Originally conceived by W Magazine’s Alix Browne, the project was developed in collaboration with her colleague Cian Browne, Salon 94 curator Fabienne Stephan and the fashion boutique Opening Ceremony. The first of the flags were unveiled at the gala on 3 May at City Point in Brooklyn, where five creations, including those by Vik Muniz, Pedro Reyes and Rirkrit Tiravanija, were auctioned to benefit the organisation. The remaining flags will be featured in an online auction in early June before the project officially launched to the public on Flag Day, 14 June, with a new flag rising each month in a different location somewhere in the city’s metropolitan area. The open-ended project may bring in additional artists as it develops.
The Jamaican-born artist Nari Ward chose a motif of African prayer symbols known as the Congo Cosmogram, which represent birth, life, death and re-birth. “Several of these patterns are drilled into the floorboards of the one of the oldest African American churches in the US, and it is believed that the patterns functioned as breathing holes for runaway slaves hiding under the floor and awaiting safe transport north”, says Nato Thompson, the chief curator and artistic director of Creative Time. Trevor Paglen’s riffs on Weeping Angel, a hacking tool that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly developed to spy on American citizens.
While many of the flags speak to particular constituencies, and some speak for all, the project comes during a time where artists “are eager to address the political climate and produce a sense of community”, says Nato Thompson, Creative Time’s chief curator and artistic director. Facing threatened cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, he says, “it is essential that those in support of art’s role in society be more forceful, vocal and expressive than ever”.