WORK | BIO | CONTACT
KATHERINE SHAUGHNESSY
| Flags |
Complementary
60"h x 36"w, cotton threads from a Mexican flag and a United States flag, 2025
(Installation view of Complementary at The Do Right Hall in Marfa, Texas, 2025)
Complementary is a 3x5-foot hand-woven textile made of red, white, green and blue cotton threads. After deconstructing, thread
by thread, a Mexican flag and an American flag, I wove those same threads back together using a loom. The result is
an earthen-colored, loosely woven, hemmed banner with a single light blue stripe running vertically down the middle. The overall
proportion and presence of grommets are the only features suggesting a flag since the resulting muted tones have made it lose
all evident emblematic power. Through this subtle decomposing & recomposing gesture, I conceive of a blending of
the two nations at their most symbolic level. The idea for this piece came to me during a lecture by Professor Herve
Vanel at American University in Paris who was presenting his new book, Jasper Johns Le Chewing -- Gum et La Colle, that
discusses Jasper Johns' and Donald Judd's "Negative flags" from 1968. Their flags reimagined the American flag in which the
colors were swapped out for their opposite, or complementary, colors -- green for red, orange for blue, black for white, etc. The
resulting flags were both political statements of disapproval of the Vietnam War and, in Johns' case, the conjuring of an optical
phenomenon. Viewers were encouraged to stare at the negative flag and then move their gaze to an adjacent gray field where
the Stars and Stripes momentarily righted in their mind's eye back to red, white and blue. Similarly, I am playing with
complementary colors - weaving together green and red, in addition to white and blue, taken from the USA and Mexican flags.
From a distance, the viewer sees mostly brown and only upon close inspection do the colors reveal themselves.
Copyright Ⓒ 1998-2026 Katherine Shaughnessy