Josephine Meckseper
Untitled (Flag 2), 2017

Josephine Meckseper’s flag is both a collage of an American flag and fragments of one of her earlier works, “Goodbye to Language.” A black dripped color field resembles a United States map, divided in two. The black and white striped sock takes on a symbolic meaning of polarization, but also stands for creating a dialogue about of collective future and the one of our planet.

“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 take 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.”

– Josephine Meckseper

About the Artist
Josephine Meckseper (b. 1964, Lilienthal, Germany) uses commercial forms of presentation such as vitrines, window displays, and magazines, to demonstrate inextricable influences of consumer culture on society. Melding the aesthetic language of modernism with the formal language of commercial display, Meckseper combines images and artifacts of historical undercurrents and political protest movements to critically examine mass media, our consumption-obsessed society and political systems.

Josephine Meckseper studied at Berlin University of the Arts, Germany, and completed her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 1992. Meckseper has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including the Whitney Biennial (2006, 2010); 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Seville (2006); Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007); Sharjah Biennial (2011); and Taipei Biennial (2014); her work is featured in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum; FRAC Nord - Pas-de-Calais, Dunkerque, France; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich, Switzerland; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2012, Meckseper presented her first public project Manhattan Oil Project with Art Production Fund, installing two monumental kinetic sculptures modeled after mid-20th century oil pumps on a vacant lot near Times Square. Inspired by the oil pumps that the artist discovered in Electra, a boarded-up town once famous for being the pump jack capital of Texas, the fully motorized sculptures recalled the ruins of ghost towns, forgotten monuments of America's decaying industrial past.

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

Vik Muniz
Diaspora Cloud, 2017

Vik Muniz’s flag uses the sky as a metaphor for the ephemerality of connection within a community – and Diaspora Cloud, in title and image, symbolizes a geographically and temporally dispersed public that nevertheless share a similar viewpoint. Diaspora Cloud also cites an earlier work of Muniz’s, commissioned by Creative Time: Clouds (2001), a “low tech illusion,” wherein clouds were “drawn” over the Manhattan skyline by a crop-dusting plane re-fitted for skywriting. Muniz’s temporary public art clouds were also created in Tampa as part of his 2006 USFCAM exhibition Vik Muniz: Reflex.

About the Artist
Photographer and mixed-media artist Vik Muniz (b.1961, São Paulo, Brazil) is best known for repurposing everyday materials for intricate and heavily layered recreations of canonical artworks. Muniz works in a range of media to subvert and exceed his viewers’ expectations, using trash to peanut butter and jelly, the latter was used to recreate Andy Warhol’s famous Double Mona Lisa (1963) that was in turn an appropriation of Da Vinci’s original. Layered appropriation is a consistent theme in Muniz’s bold, ironic and often deceiving imagery, inspired by pop culture and history, exploring human memory and perception.

In 2008, Muniz undertook a large-scale project in Brazil, photographing trash-pickers from world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Muniz collaborated with catadores, the people employed to pick out recyclable material from garbage, and created his famous large-scale portraits composed from the discarded materials. These works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo and sold at auctions in London. Muniz’s share of the profits were donated to the workers’ cooperative, and he also contributes to Brazilian non-profits dedicated to education and job training for street children. The project was documented in the 2010 film Waste Land, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 83rd Academy Awards. As an attempt to raise awareness for urban poverty, Muniz explained the work as a “step away from the realm of fine art,” wanting instead to “change the lives of people with the same materials they deal with every day.” In 2010, Muniz was named a Unesco Goodwill Ambassador.

Vik Muniz’s Diaspora Cloud is on view June 6th – July 3rd, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– Blue Star Contemporary, 116 Blue Star, San Antonio, TX
– Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, 1 Museum Drive, Greenwich, CT
– City of Bloomington, Indiana, Seminary Park, 546 S College Avenue; City Hall, 401 N Morton Street; and Rosehill Cemetery, 1100 W 4th Street
– 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
– John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– Otis College of Art and Design, MFA Art + Social Practice, 9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
– 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
– Wassaic Project, 37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic, NY
– Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ

Ahmet Ogut
If You’d Like to See This Flag in Colors, Burn It (In memory of Marinus Boezum), 2017

Ahmet Ogut’s socially engaged and often humorous work promotes an awareness and questioning of the systems of everyday life. Through his insightful pieces, the artist challenges our perceptions of daily experiences as well as his role of awakening the critical consciousness of his audience.

Inspired by Dutch visual artist Marinus Boezem’s postcard-sized photograph entitled “If you’d like this photo in colors, burn it” (1967-1969), Ogut’s flag provokes the viewer to consider problematic social and political structures and strategies with merely the prompt of flag-burning as a perceptual shift. Ogut states, “Boezem’s instructions in this artwork were never actualized, but the performative potential of the artwork brough it to life. Similar to his invitation to burn the photo, I wanted to create a flag that could inspire the imagination, instead of limiting viewers to predefined colors and symbols, and leave them feeling inert."

About the Artist
Internationally-renowned sociocultural initiator and conceptual artist, Ahmet Ogut (b. 1981, Diyarbakir, Turkey) works in a wide range of media including photography, video, installation and site-specific public works to address complex social issues with a sense of humor. Public spaces are the main stage for Ogut’s work as they contain a certain performative quality, where both common and marginalized opinions can become visible. Ogut often collaborates with people working outside of the art world to create projects that impact and shift perceptions of global issues including cultural identities and political ideologies. Ogut participated in a year-long residency at Tate and the Delfina Foundation, resulting in the major ongoing project, The Silent University (2012) an autonomous knowledge exchange platform, led by a group of lecturers, consultants and research fellows who are refugees and asylum seekers unable to work due to their current status.

Ahmet Ogut’s If You’d Like to See This Flag in Colors, Burn It (In memory of Marinus Boezem) is on view May 16th – June 6th, 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
– John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– MASS MoCA, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– 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

LaToya Ruby Frazier
Flint, 1,462 Days and Counting Man-Made Water Crisis, 2017

Artist and activist LaToya Ruby Frazier asks for justice for the communities in Flint, Michigan, a majority-black city, with a flag that reminds us of the number of days residents have been living without access to safe water as of April 2018. The photograph is from her 2016 project Flint is Family, where Frazier spent five months with three generations of Flint women who suffer and still thrive as they face the water crisis in Flint – “the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in recent national memory.”

LaToya states: “The number 1462 will be the exact amount of days Flint residents have lived without new pipes since the lead leeching took place. And yes, that is a real photograph I took in Flint, where they were keeping locked up pipes behind barbed wire.”

About the Artist
Winner of the MacArthur “Genius” award, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s artistic practice spans a range of media that incorporates photography, video and performance and centers on the nexus of social justice, cultural change and commentary on the American experience. Citing Gordon Parks as an influence, Frazier uses the camera as a weapon and agent of social change, building archives that address industrialism, rustbelt revitalization, environmental justice, healthcare inequality, family and communal history.

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s FLINT, 1,462 days and counting man-made water crisis is on view April 25th – May 16th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
– 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
– John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– MASS MoCA, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– 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

Rirkrit Tiravanija
Untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag), 2017

The message of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s flag is a reference to German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, the English translation of ‘Angst essen Seele auf’. The film first appeared in Tiravanija’s Untitled 1994 (Fear Eats the Soul), a bar he constructed at Esther Schipper’s storefront gallery in Cologne that served only beer and cola. Fassbinder’s two lead characters, a German cleaner and a Moroccan mechanic, meet in the film’s opening scene over the aforesaid drinks, and commence an unlikely relationship that brings out their own deepest fears as much as the xenophobia and racism of their surroundings.

About the Artist
Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) grew up in Thailand, Ethiopia and Canada. A pioneer of the Relational Aesthetics movement, Tiravanija has aligned his artistic production with an ethic of social engagement, often inviting viewers to inhabit and activate his work. Focused on real-time experience and exchange, Rirkrit Tiravanija's artistic production breaks down the barriers between the object and the spectator, constructing communal environments that offer a playful alternative venue for quotidian activities. In one of his best-known series, begun with pad thai (1990) at the Paula Allen Gallery in New York, Tiravanija rejected traditional art objects altogether and instead cooked and served food for exhibition visitors.

Tiravanija received his BA from the Ontario College of Art (1984) and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1986), followed by the Whitney Independent Study Program. Tiravanija has participated in solo and group exhibitions at major institutions around the globe, and has received numerous grants and awards, including the Absolut Art Award (2010); The Hugo Boss Prize (2004); The Lucelia Artist Award (20039; and the Gordon Matta Clark Foundation Award (1993), among others.

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Untitled 2017 (fear eats the soul) (white flag) is on view April 4th – April 25th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
– Blue Star Contemporary, 116 Blue Star, San Antonio, TX
– California College of the Arts, 1111 8th Street, San Francisco, CA
– 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
– John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Light City, Baltimore, MD’s waterfront from the South Shore of the Inner Harbor to Harbor East
– MASS MoCA, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– Pratt Institute, 200 Willoughby Avenue, South Hall 1, Brooklyn, NY
– MOCA Jacksonville, 333 North Laura Street, Jacksonville, FL
– 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
– Wassaic Project, 37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic, NY
– Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ

Trevor Paglen
Weeping Angel, 2017

Trevor Paglen, known for his unflinching critique of the surveillance state, creates a flag that further enhances our “visual vocabulary” on this pressing issue. Paglen’s flag features a weeping angel surrounded by code. Weeping Angel is the name for a hacking tool that the CIA reportedly developed to spy on citizens, in which internet-connected TVs would be retooled to be in a fake “off” mode but covertly send recordings back. Alternately, the angels may also reference sci-fi villains from the Dr. Who series or a term from quantum physics describing entities that cease to exist if one attempts to observe them.

About the Artist
Trevor Paglen is an artist whose work spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines. Among his chief concerns are learning how to see the historical moment we live in and developing the means to imagine alternative futures. Paglen has launched an artwork into distant orbit around the Earth in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT, contributed research and cinematography to the Academy Award winning film CitizenFour, and created a radioactive public sculpture for the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan.

Paglan holds a B.A. from University of California, Berkeley, an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD. in Geography from University of California, Berkeley. Paglen has had solo exhibitions at Vienna Secession, Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum, Van Abbe Museum, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Prootcinema Istanbul, and has participated in group exhibitions at Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, along with numerous other venues. Paglan is currently the artist-in-residence at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.

Trevor Paglen’s Weeping Angel is on view March 14th – April 4th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
– California College of the Arts, 1111 8th Street, San Francisco, CA
– 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
– John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– MASS MoCA, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– MOCA Jacksonville, 333 North Laura Street, Jacksonville, FL
– 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

Jeremy Deller
Don't Worry, Be Angry, 2017

Don't Worry, Be Angry reflects the roots of much of Deller's artworks, inspired by social ritual and folkloric history. Deller's work is animated by a commitment to all narratives, whether they are sourced from high or low culture. This flag acts as a gentle call-to-action with a serious message: "Don't worry," the artists reminds us, there are other options for protest: "Be Angry."

When asked to comment on his flag, Deller replied, "I hope it's pretty self explanatory."

About the Artist
Jeremy Deller (b.1966, London, UK) lives and works in London. His works, trans-historical and presenting freedom of expression as a social vector of sense and values, initiate a dialogue between cultures, people, past, present and what the future could be. Winner of the 2004 Turner Prize, Deller navigates socio-political tensions with an open, generous, and collaborative approach often devaluing the artistic ego with works that require viewer participation as part of the creative process. For his 2009 work It Is What It Is: Conversations about Iraq, commissioned by Creative Time, Deller traveled the United States with a car destroyed by a bomb in Baghdad in 2007, inviting journalists, Iraqi refugees, soldiers, and scholars to share their experiences. In the lead-up to the UK's 2017 general election, posters by Deller bearing the text "Strong and stable my arse", a reference to Theresa May's election slogan, caused a sensation when they appeared throughout London.

Jeremy Deller’s Don’t Worry Be Angry is on view February 28th – March 14th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
– California College of the Arts, 1111 8th St, San Francisco, CA
– 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
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– 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

Alex Da Corte
Friends (for Ree), 2017

Alex Da Corte's flag is an exact replica of a drawing made by artist Ree Morton (1936-1977), sometime between May 1974 and June 1975, as part of a project called Something in the Wind, which included hand-sewn and painted flags, each of which names a close friend, family member or fellow artist. Morton was a post-minimalist known for her handmade embroidered works. The flag celebrates friendship as an organic bond, and an act to create accidental families. While the physical version of this flag was never realized during Morton's lifetime, Alex Da Corte pays homage to the late artist by bringing her work to life.

"In celebration of Ree and all of the friend families we form, may we grow stronger and stranger everyday," says Alex Da Corte.

About the Artist
Alex Da Corte was born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1980. Da Corte has had solo exhibitions worldwide, including The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Art + Practice, and MASS MoCA, for his first survey entitled Free Roses. His collaborative work with Jayson Musson, Easternsports, originally commissioned for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in 2014, was recently included in the group exhibition Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905-2016 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His new immersive installation, Slow Graffiti, will be on view this summer at Vienna Secession. Da Corte lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Alex Da Corte’s Friends (For Ree) is on view February 14th – February 28th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
– California College of the Arts, 1111 8th St, San Fransisco, CA
– 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
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– Paper Chase Press, 7176 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– 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
– Wassaic Project, 37 Furnace Bank Road, Wassaic, NY
– Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ

Pedro Reyes
Hands on With a Vision, 2017

Reyes offers the flag of the pUN, the People’s United Nations, an experimental conference that applies tools and resources from social psychology, theater, art, and conflict resolution to geopolitics. Unlike the real UN, where delegates are appointed by states and act as career diplomats, the people’s UN welcomes individuals who are connected by family ties or birth to the nations represented at the UN.

“The flag of pUN is inspired by the hamsa (which literally translates to ‘five’ from Arabic),” says Pedro Reyes. “This right palm with an eye at the center of it has been a symbol of protection across cultures and millennia, originating in Africa and predating Christianity and Islam. Workers’ and peoples’ movements have often been represented by a hand, sometimes holding a tool or closed in a fist. Here, the hand is open, and its five fingers represent the world’s five populated continents This benignant hand placed over an orb is meant to signal our mission to protect the planet. We invite you to join us.”

About the Artist
Pedro Reyes was born in Mexico City in 1972. He has won international attention for large-scale projects that address current social and political issues. Through a varied practice utilizing sculpture, performance, video, and activism, Reyes explores the power of individual and collective organization to incite change through communication, creativity, happiness, and humor. In the spring of 2014, the exhibition CAM@25: Social Engagement, included Reyes’ Imagine (2012), a sculptural installation of musical instruments created from firearms—including revolvers, shotguns and machine guns—crushed by tanks and steamrollers to render them useless. In conjunction with the exhibition, Reyes conducted a Legislative Theatre Workshop, inviting participants to revise the Second Amendment, which included a live performance of the instruments. In the fall of 2016, Creative Time presented Pedro Reyes’s Doomocracy, a house of political horrors, at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

Pedro Reyes’ Hands On With A Vision is on view January 16th, 2018 – February 14th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– California College of the Arts, 1111 8th St, San Fransisco, CA
– 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
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– 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

Ann Hamilton
Fly Together, 2017

Fly Together incorporates recurring themes in Hamilton’s work – birds, indigo, suspensions, fabric, fragility, ephemerality, and thread – all elements that evoke questions of space, collective voice, communities past and labor present, memory, and imagination. With two songbirds holding the cloth between their beaks, Hamilton explores the potential made possible through our own mutual cooperation. She asks, “ Using their mouths as we use our hands, perhaps they hold a piece of the sky? We see that to carry the cloth’s weight, to allow the cloth’s movement, they must hold with gentleness and tenacity. They must work and fly together.”

About the Artist
Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surroundings of her large-scale multi-media installations. Using time as process and material, her methods of making serve as an invocation of place, of collective voice, of communities past and of labor present. In 2016, Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum hosted habitus, a solo exhibition by Hamilton that took place across three sites. Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, Heinz Award, MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She represented the United States in the 1991 Sao Paulo Bienal, the 1999 Venice Biennale. Hamilton has been commissioned for major projects, including the Waterfront Seattle (upcoming), and her work has exhibited extensively around the world.

Ann Hamilton’s Fly Together is on view December 13th, 2017 – January 15th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY
– Ferrovia Studios, 17 Railroad Ave, Kingston, NY
– Texas State Galleries, 233 West Sessom Drive, San Marcos, TX
– The Commons, in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1340 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS
– The Union for Contemporary Art, 2423 N 24th Street, Omaha, NE
– Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ

Yoko Ono
Imagine Peace, 2017

IMAGINE PEACE is a concept born from Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s tireless work as peace activists, beginning with their 1973 proposal of ‘Nutopia,’ a world of without borders. Since its inception, Ono has manifested IMAGINE PEACE in over 24 languages, as billboards, posters, newspaper advertisements, badges, tweets, and countless other media, to share this message of peace with the global community. In 2007 Ono created the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER on Viðey Island off the coast of Reykjavík, Iceland, a tower of beaming light, which represents wisdom and love, and acts as a beacon for all those wishing to contribute to world peace. This flag continues Ono’s ever-growing peace campaign, perhaps now more timely than ever.

About the Artist
Yoko Ono is a multi-media artist working in performance, instruction, film, installation, music, and writing. A forerunner in conceptual art involving collaboration, audience participation, and social activism since the early 1960s, Ono challenges viewers’ understanding of art and the world around them.

Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE is on view November 7th – December 13th, 2017 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY
– Ferrovia Studios, 17 Railroad Ave, Kingston, NY
– California College of the Arts, 1111 8th St, San Fransisco, CA
– Texas State Galleries, 233 West Sessom Drive, San Marcos, TX
– City of Bloomington, Indiana, Seminary Park, 546 S College Ave; City Hall, 401 N Morton St; and Rosehill Cemetery, 1100 W 4th St
– The Commons, in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1340 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS

Jayson Musson
A Horror, 2017

Musson’s flag forces the viewer to engage in an all too befitting commentary on our political present. “While Walter Benjamin referred to the history of civilization as a history of barbarism, Jayson Musson sees this phenomena in the spirit of SAW, Leprechaun 2, and The Exorcist.” said Nato Thompson, Artistic Director at Creative Time.

“I find patriotism lazy; I was born Here, therefore Here is great,” said Jayson Musson. “Patriotism is a part of the progression of history in which a few mighty sovereign states crushed nearly the entirety of the globe underfoot in pursuit of their inalienable rights which more often than not, was simply the pursuit of riches.”

About the Artist
Brooklyn-based artist Jayson Musson burst onto the scene in 2010 in the form of his online hip-hop alter ego, Hennessy Youngman, offering hilarious and strident discourses on contemporary art and its discontents through his video series, Art Thoughtz, which quickly became an Internet phenomenon. In his non-video work, he also works in the productive gap between high and low culture. In writing, performance and visual art that incisively satirizes and confuses pop culture and the art world, Jayson Musson provokes the boundaries that define cultural stereotypes. Musson's consideration of a public extends beyond the confines of art institutions, deliberately entering the open arenas of mass media. Musson’s latest solo exhibition, Demon All Day, opened in May at Salon 94 in New York City.

Jayson Musson’s A Horror is on view at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY

Robert Longo
Untitled (Dividing Time), 2017

Longo’s Untitled (Dividing Time) is based on the artist’s 2016 large-scale charcoal drawing, exhibited in Longo’s “The Destroyer Cycle” exhibition at Metro Pictures in New York City. The drawing titled Untitled (Nov. 8, 2016) was completed the day of therecent presidential election. The two-panel drawing of the American flag is separated by five inches between the left panel and right panel, the latter measures slightly larger than the former. This monumental work reflects the current symptomatic divide in the United States.

About the Artist
Robert Longo (b. 1953) is a New York-based artist, filmmaker, and musician. He was among the five artists included in the seminal 1977 exhibition Pictures at Artists Space in New York. Longo has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, including the Venice Biennale, Documenta, and the Whitney Biennial. He has had several retrospective exhibitions, including exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice. His latest solo exhibition, “The Destroyer Cycle” opened in May at Metro Pictures in New York City. Alongside Kate Fowle, Longo recently co-curated the exhibition at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, “PROOF: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo,” which travels to the Brooklyn Museum in September 2017. Robert Longo lives and works in New York and is represented by Metro Pictures, NYC; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris/Salzburg; and Capitain Petzel, Berlin.

Robert Longo’s Untitled (Dividing Time) is on view at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, 258 Main St, Ridgefield, CT
– Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, 1 Brookings Dr, St. Louis, MO
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit St, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY

NARI WARD
BREATHING FLAG, 2017

Ward’s Breathing Flag references Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) flag combined with an African prayer symbol known as a Congolese Cosmogram, representing birth, life, death and rebirth. Ward explains, “several of these hole patterns are drilled into the floorboards of one of the oldest African-American churches in the United States in Savannah, Georgia. It is believed that the drilled pattern functioned as breathing holes for runaway slaves who, hiding under the floor, awaited safe transport north.” He continues, “the union of that moment and of Garvey’s black nationalist flag acknowledge the resilience of the human spirit to survive even as we continue the need to remind America that Black Lives Matter.”

Link to Vilcek Foundation video of Nari Ward speaking about his practice and influences

About the Artist
Nari Ward was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica and lives and works in New York. He graduated with a BA from City University of New York, Hunter College in 1989 and an MFA from City University of New York, Brooklyn College in 1992. Ward’s work has been widely exhibited on an international level, including solo exhibitions at The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA (2016); Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL (2015); and elsewhere. Ward’s solo exhibition G.O.A.T., again is currently on view at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City.

Nari Ward’s Breathing Flag is on view at:
- Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
- Queens Museum, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, New York City Building, Corona, NY
- Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118-128 N Broad St, Philadelphia, PA
- 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
- USFCAM, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL

TANIA BRUGUERA
DIGNITY HAS NO NATIONALITY, 2017

Reimagining a more just and fluid global cartographic context, Tania Bruguera’s flag offers a vision for dignity of all peoples — regardless of citizenship and national territorial belonging.

About the Artist
Tania Bruguera was born in Havana, Cuba in 1968. Bruguera choreographs performances that question the possibility of political representation and attempt to collapse the distance between art and life, eroding institutionalized injustice and prejudicial hierarchies in the process. Bruguera is preparing to intervene in the 2018 Cuban elections in collaboration with Otro18.

Creative Time has previously worked with Tania Bruguera on Immigrant Movement International and the Creative Time Summit.

Tania Bruguera’s Dignity Has No Nationality was on view at:
- Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
- 67 Hudson Street, NY, NY
- USFCAM, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL