In 1990, responding to the lack of diversity in the European art world, Museum Overholland curator Christiaan Braun put together the exhibition Black USA to honor the work of eight contemporary African American artists.
The landmark show featured Bill Traylor, Romare Bearden, Robert Colescott, Benny Andrews, Martin Puryear, Nathaniel Hunter Jr., Jules Allen, and the enigmatic “magician,” David Hammons.
For the show, Hammons created African American Flag, a version of the stars and stripes reimagined in red, black, and green. For the duration of the exhibition, Hammons requested the flag to be flown in the courtyard of the museum.
The flag’s colors chosen by Hammons point to another moment in history, one in which the Pan-African Flag, a symbol of Black pride, was born out of injustice…
In 1914, Marcus Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), dedicated to “racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, and the formation of an independent black nation in Africa.”
In response to a racist song from the time titled “Every Race Has a Flag but the Coon,” Garvey and members of the UNIA decided to create the Pan-African Flag consisting of three horizontal color bars.
The red of the flag “represents the blood that unites all people of Black African ancestry, and shed for liberation…
“…the black is for the people whose existence as a nation is affirmed by the existence of the flag…”
“…and the green is the abundant natural wealth of Africa.”
Since its creation, the flag has become a global symbol of Black pride, its influence clearly visible in the visual identities of countries (like with Kenya’s flag, seen above) who choose to spread and uphold Garvey’s ideologies.
Even before merging the Pan-African Flag with the American flag to create African American Flag, Hammons had employed the latter as a motif in works such as Pray for America (1969) and Injustice Case (1970).
However, due to two key political events in 1990, the same year of the Black USA exhibition, Hammons’ use of the symbol in African American Flag took on an added significance…
Following a 20-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled to strike down the Flag Preservation Act, guaranteeing the right to desecrate the national symbol as an act of free speech.
And in Hammons’ home state, David Dinkins was elected the first Black mayor of New York City. The serendipitous timing associated the flag with the sense of pride and equity evoked by the political victory.
Nearly ten years after its debut, African American Flag was acquired by The Broad in Los Angeles and has been shown at such prestigious institutions as MoMA, PS1, and Jack Shainman’s Kinderhook gallery.
Since 2005, the African American Flag has found a permanent home flying outside the Studio Museum in Harlem, an institution dedicated to “artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally.”
And during the Black Lives Matter protests over the past two years, the artwork reached an even more iconic status.
While it is unclear exactly what prompted the transition from artwork to emblem, one can assume it was at least somewhat influenced by the internet’s ability to decontextualize and circulate symbols with a simple Google image search.
In that way, African American Flag has transcended its status as artwork and become a cultural symbol tied to the street. And although the elusive Hammons hasn’t said so yet, one can assume that’s exactly how he would want it…
