JESSE BONNELL

Flag Semaphores is a large public art work which forms an ecosystem of interconnected mediums, mixing performance, film, sculpture, and works on paper. Each element plays off the other, creating a choreography of images, language, and sound. The work reflects the tension collectively felt between our isolation our unconscious, automatic landscapes. It is a micro memoir, a deep inquiry into the effects of fascism, poverty, death, and civic redemption.  

Flag Semaphores creates a free public art work that is for and created with communities that are otherwise underrepresented inside of traditional art spaces. 

Flag Semaphores also draws from a variety of material centered on visual and verbal communication to phantom spaces and people across vast distances. The initial reference point for Flag Semaphores was Christ Stopped at Eboli, a memoir written by Carlo Levi in 1945. In the book, Levi recounts the experience of his own exile in Basilicata, the region of Southern Italy. A political activist and vocal anti-fascist, Levi was arrested in Northern Italy and exiled to the far southern-region for one year. Examining and reframing the text, we found profound resonance between the author’s own time and the extraordinary moment in which we find ourselves.

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