Some Material Flags (2008)
seersucker fabric, 400 x 200 cm
The national flag typically represents the ideals, history, political structure, and so on, of a country. The concept behind Some Material Flags is to consider how a national flag might be designed to represent commonplace information about its inhabitants.
Stars, circles, stripes, crescents, diamonds and other shapes
will each illustrate – in proportion to the entire population as to the
entire flag – such ordinary information as coffee consumption, cell
phone usage, alcohol consumption, sugar consumption, literacy levels,
and so on.?The idea is to relocate the idealistic symbology of flags
into the realm of the ordinary. s
To this end, the flags are made of seersucker – a fabric whose
texture is striped with puckers and designed for the practical effect of
wicking sweat off a person's body with much greater ease than a typical
flat fabric. Its pattern is generally striped or checked.