THE MOMENTARY: FLAG PROJECT
[Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Momentary, 2021]
Nylon Flag, Steel Flagpole
“All you touch, you change. All you change, changes you”
Science fiction narratives often examine the problems of the present by exacerbating them in an imagined future or resolving them in tenuous ways. One such narrative, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, first published in 1993, served as the inspiration for Jeyifous’s flag.
The flag also incorporates visual elements that recall the Osage creation story, as well as the history of the Momentary’s site. In the Osage creation story, the sun is the father of the Osage. After the Osage were told to leave the sky and go down to the earth, it was the elk, through the giving of his body, who created the land and all the features on it that enabled the Osage people to live (Besaw, Hopkins, Well-Off-Man). In Jeyifous’s flag, viewers can see a red sun, as well as a deer or elk-like figure near the tree.
