Guirlande du Monde > Project Description

     This sculpture was completed during a three-month artists residency program in southern France. It was an idea I had years before: simply, to weave all the flags of the world’s nations together into a single braid. My intention was to compress these symbols of nations -the banners used to demarcate their borders, their property- into a line of color and pattern, poetically expressing their underlying unity within our world. I also wanted to return my mothers love of braiding and the deep resonance of self-sufficiency, and frugality that it still evokes in the central United States, back to the country and culture in which she had been raised.

     In keeping with the spirit of the project, all of the 193 flags I required needed to be donated. My efforts for these donations led me to contact various international student organizations, Peace Corps volunteers, the American Refugee Committee and, of course, international arts groups. I also put up a Web site to act as a catalyst and information center for the project. I next contacted all the foreign embassies in Washington D.C. with photographs of my previous work, and a cover letter describing the project and asking for their countries participation. One week after the mailing, I began telephoning the embassies asking if they had received my request and, if the proper person at the embassy had not seen my mailing, which unfortunately was often the case, I began e-mailing and faxing the same information to them. Within a month, nearly one hundred embassies had agreed to participate and the much-needed flags began to arrive, along with handwritten notes wishing me luck with the project and mirroring the peaceful intentions motivating the artwork. With only a few weeks left before my departure date, my friends in the United States and other individuals from around the world came to my aid and donated the remaining flags that I needed.

     The unity that I was seeking, that I was trying to represent, was actually accomplished by the very act of the donations themselves. Also by this time I realized that I could not use the technique I had planned on to create the braid. The method that I was familiar with, that my mother had used, called for the cutting of the material into equal widths, folding, ironing and then using three of these equal lengths of material to produce the braid. The thought of cutting these flags was out of the question. The power inherent in their physical presence, compounded by their stunning individuality, demanded that they remain whole and intact within the project. So I packed all these beautiful symbols of 193 nations, gathered over the past four months, and left for France, knowing what I wanted to create but not having any idea whatsoever as to how to do so.

     I arrived at the Carmargo Foundation in Cassis, France, on September 8th, 2004, with almost 3,000 square feet of material tightly packed within two boxes, each weighing 32 kilos.  I was exhausted but happy to be back in the country of my mother’s childhood and was stunned once again by the natural beauty of the Mediterranean. I had not been to this area for 25 years since visiting my great aunt, who had raised my mother and had retired to this same region of France. I did not know how I was going accomplish what I had set out to achieve but trusted that the outcome would reflect the enormous opportunity I had been given.  I hiked the cliffs surrounding Cassis, swam in the waters of the Mediterranean and began eating the wonderful food that the region of Provence is so famous for. I also began buying fresh flowers regularly at the local market as my mother had taught me by example long ago, arranging bouquets for my studio and apartment.

     To announce the project to the citizens of France, to the sun, to the wind and that lovely Mediterranean Sea, I flew all the flags outside with the help of my friends, covering the Camargo property with three thousand square feet of intense color and patterns. The beauty of the sea, the pure white limestone cliffs and lovely greens of the plants and trees further enhanced this intensity. The extraordinary number of nations represented, and the equally amazing amount of nations that were simply unknown to many of those who saw them, struck a cord of wonder in the other the residents of the Camargo Foundation as well as the citizens of Cassis.

     The flags were then taken down, heaped in enormous piles in my small studio and the braiding begun. I started using three flags at once, tying the next flags to the ends of the braid as I proceeded. This produced a thin line with tufts of grommets and bunting where the ends had been joined. I was not happy with the thickness of this line and so unwove it and began again. I then started with two flags to produce a line, twisting them together for strength and then using three similar lengths to create the braid. After several attempts using this method I remained unhappy with the result. The width of the line did not reflect the power that I was feeling through the presence of the individual flags, their resonance and strength on both a physical and metaphorical level. I unbraided this effort and began once again.

     I arrived at the idea of using still more flags to achieve a thicker, more muscular braid and began using a heavy wire to hold the ends of the flags together. Using three flags twisted together to produce one of the lines of fabric necessitated that I tie together the ends of 18 flags at once. When I started gathering up this amount of material at a single point in the braid, I was struck by its similarity to the bouquets of flowers I was arranging, often on the very same table.  Here was a vivid bouquet of colors, of nations, of cultures coming together in front of my eyes, flowing through my hands. I worked feverishly to allow this idea, this insight to manifest itself. These bursts of vibrant color and form accentuated the methodical, meditative feeling that the thickness and strength of the braid evoked. This bouquet of nations, this flowering of the world, moved me in a way that others have been moved, absorbed in a similar process of reflection and prayer, meditations and intention.

     As satisfied as I felt with these results, I remained disturbed by one seemingly unimportant element of the work. Although the wire I was using was hidden from view, I could feel its presence and it seemed cold, almost mechanical, compared with this organic and very lively form. And then the solution dawned on me! I did not need to use the wire I could simply use one of the flags as a rope and achieve the same results, securely bunching the ends together. After using a portion of a single flag as a rope, I took the excess length and ran it into the existing braid and then tied it off to another flag at it’s endpoint, creating a seemingly arbitrary and yet essential smaller knot. To my eyes these delicate knots became small blossoms softly woven into the larger pattern of the braid. I was further elated by the insight, the connection, between these knots and the prayer beads that I have been wearing on my wrist for years.  Religious contemplatives around the world developed prayer beads after centuries of using a length of cloth similarly knotted for counting their cycles of prayers. The realization that I was creating a garland of prayers knots through my intentions, my own prayers of peace and unity, composed of some of the most revered symbols of nations on the earth was a moment of pure bliss for me.

     The result of my efforts are exactly what I had intended although the method had to be revealed to me through the process. No individual national flag can be discerned within this sculpture but the conceptual knowledge that all the flags are right in front of my eyes undermines this anonymity and gives the piece a strength far beyond it’s length and breadth. The physical process that is so evident in the work, that actually is the work, acts also as its spiritual center, giving it both its pulse and rhythm.  The work sparkles with the paradoxes and ambiguities that are at the heart of the world’s political and religious institutions which, after all, are simply a mirror of our own lives. Unlike these same institutions, as well as ourselves, this sculpture effortlessly expresses these ambiguities with a direct and emphatic simplicity. This garland of the world, this joyous braid of prayer knots, has shown me that a political expression can also be poetically correct and although manifested physically, it remains an essentially spiritual experience, similar to the process of its creation.

Steven Woodward

February 14th, 2005