My Story is My Flag- April 28, 2018 Graham, NC
My Story is My Flag is a free, community-based public art flag project designed and led by artist and Vexillologist, Cristina Victor in collaboration with local Graham organization Co|Operative and Archive of Creative Culture. We invited residents of Graham and neighboring communities to participate in designing and creating flags that will be publicly displayed for six months along N. Main Street in Graham’s historic Downtown Square.
My Story is My Flag gives residents to collectively celebrate and give a unique visual voice to local citizens. This project had a very successful run in Oakland, California. Please READ and HEAR more about it! www.mystoryismyflag.com
During a one-week workshop led by artist and registered Vexillologist (flag nerd), Cristina Victor will guide the creation of the flags which will be conceptualized with you. The workshop launched on Monday April 16 with an overview and meet & greet and ran through Thursday April 19th in the evening hours between 6 pm and 9 pm. This time was dedicated to designing the flags and writing/honing your story. The workshop finished up with an open sewing session during drop in hours of 10 am – 6 pm Saturday, April 21 and Sunday, April 22. All workshop meetings were held at Co|operative.
A flag raising ceremony and celebration occurred on April 28, 2018.
More about the artist: Cristina Victor is an interdisciplinary, Cuban-American artist, born and raised in Miami. Her work involves various approaches to creating generative and inclusive dialogue about the layered complexities in discussing identity. Through performance, textiles, installation, video and public engagement, she designs and constructs generative ways to expose, critique and challenge binary perspectives on culture.
The use of Vexillology (the study, design and history of flags) provides a foundational thread for her research and textile works. Whether collaborating with the public, experimental arts or protest organizations or working from an auto-ethnographic perspective, Cristina creates works that are visually seductive, symbolically loaded and experimentally activated for maximum visibility.
Victor holds an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in Latin American History from Sarah Lawrence College. She has exhibited and performed throughout the Bay Area.
