My
skin is my flag
The
flag embodies the nation, territory, and the border. Visible from afar, it asserts the supposed legitimacy of
local powers and materializes the idea of an abstract
collective body, assigned to a specific geographical
space.
SkinFlag parodies
national flags, all of them marked by the colonial and imperial
behaviors of the human species, which has progressively appropriated
the globe. They question the relevance of national
borders, these territorial limits inherited from incessant
conflicts, and challenge the will to make identity,
territory, and power coincide.
Far
from the standards flown on official buildings, SkinFlags are
as thick as elephant skins : fossilized
sheets, relics of a former political order.
They remind us that every nation rests upon vulnerable
bodies, exposed to the violence of time and to that
inflicted by human beings.
Thus, SkinFlags illustrate
the obsolescence of nation-territories,
refocusing the symbol of sovereignty onto the register
of the body. They are not made of brightly colored textiles,
but of synthetic human skins, SkinBag, reproducing the tones of different ethnic groups. The flag ceases to
be a graphic sign and
becomes a sensitive surface.
In SkinFlag
France, the blue-white-red turns into Black
– Blanc – Beur (Black
– White – Arabic), giving an embodied image to
the French slogan of the 1980s.
The
folds extend from one skin tone to another, signifying that the
coherence of a group is forged through the bonds between
its members. The folds of experience and intention imprint
themselves on skins, whatever their color. These wrinkles are marks
of time, reminding us that physical and psychological
suffering are an integral part of the human condition.
The
very materiality of SkinFlags is thus
symptomatic of a social body crossed by
contradictions, wounds, shared memories, and hopes. It is born of
our differences as much as of
our similarities. We all share common
aspirations, such as self-fulfillment, pleasure, happiness,
and harmony.
SkinFlag symbolizes
the interaction and interdependence of
the individual and the collective. It claims to be the flag
of the human being, beyond racial distinctions, territorial
limits, and ideological or political conflicts.
SkinFlags can
be linked to O démocratie, a conceptual
project developed by the artist, which proposes a reconfiguration
of the political through the implementation of
a governance software designed to
synthesize a plurality of viewpoints in order to bring forth a fair
consensus, beyond national frameworks. Where SkinFlag operates on a symbolic and
bodily register,
O démocratie explores
the operational conditions of democracy, a
necessary condition for transforming our
current proto-democracies into a democracy
worthy of the name, on a transnational scale.
Peace
Objective
The SkinFlag
of peace is unified. It carries no symbol and no
distinctive color. It is a raw
skin-sheet,
a membrane of
primary matter,
thin, almost translucent.
The SkinFlag
Pax utopia is an anti-flag. It
denies the existing Israeli and Palestinian states by merging them
into a single entity. This conflict is a
revealing example of the troubled relationship between territory
and identity, land
and flag. This
utopian proposal evokes the aspiration to peace shared
by a majority of human beings, who nevertheless fail to prevent
conflicts at all
levels of their existence.
SkinFlags respond
to nationalisms that claim national
belonging as the primary foundation of identity.
Resistance
is strong.
Everyone fears losing their
skin.
