from: Kunsthaus NRW, Kornelimünster (DE)
to: Greylight Projects, Heerlen (NL)

This flag by Cristiana Cott Negoescu reimagines the iconography of sovereignty, fortune, and shared codes of value. At its center is a blindfolded Fortuna—Roman goddess of fate—framed within a shield. Traditionally tied to power, defence, and national identity, such heraldic forms are here repurposed, not as declarations of territory, but as vessels for a symbolic “code of honour.” Rather than asserting dominance, the composition evokes the protection of principle, dignity, and shared belief.

The background—a macro photograph of melting cotton candy—transforms into a swirling cosmic field, a galaxy of sugar dissolving into space. This delicate, ephemeral substance once used to lure, distract, or reward becomes a soft metaphor for the structures that shape collective desire: nations, economies, promises. The tension between the sweetness of illusion and the weight of heraldry encapsulates the fragility of belief systems, political, emotional, and mythic, that bind and divide us.

Responding to the framework of What the Flag?!, this flag resists the expressions of nationalism while appropriating its visual language. It holds space for a code unclaimed by state, gender, or class, an imagined ethical foundation that connects across borders through shared vulnerability and symbolic abstraction. The blindfolded Fortuna echoes not only justice, but the unpredictability of fate, reminding us that connection is neither guaranteed nor neutral. It is a wager, a negotiation, a risk.

Cristiana Cott Negoescu is a Romanian-born artist based in Düsseldorf whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, installation, video, and photography.

link: https://cristianacott.com/

from: IKOB, Eupen (BE)
to: Ludwig Forum, Aachen (DE)

description:
Underdog by Huize You is a digital collage of deconstructed football jerseys of the AS Eupen, the local football club of the German-speaking community of Belgium. The football jerseys were donated to the artist after they were damaged in the regional floods in 2021, and reworked by her into new configurations. For this flag, the material fragments are arranged in the form of the map of this territory. As a newcomer and an outsider to the borderland region, Huize channels questions of belonging and displacement in her work. 

Born and raised in China, Huize You studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and is now based in Eupen, Belgium. Having passed through the relentless cycle of the fashion industry, her work now exists at the intersection of personal history, cultural displacement, and the quiet rebellion against imposed roles. As both a designer and artist, she uses fashion as a tool—not simply as an industry-bound discipline, but as a language to question identity, belonging, and engage in a negotiation between tradition and autonomy.  Huize is a laureate of the IKOB – Feminist Art Prize 2025, having been awarded the third prize for an artist living in East Belgium.

link:

from: Greylight Projects, Heerlen (NL)
to: Jester, Genk (BE)

description:

link: https://kayaerdinc.com/

from: Art au Centre, Liege (BE)
to: Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (DE)

The series “Sand Landscapes” is based on 17th-century paintings borrowed from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Sophie Langohr disrupts these idyllic views by drawing inspiration from the folk art of sand bottles, goodies for tourists that captures the memory of exotic landscapes. Psychelics jolts, shifts and blurring come to disturb the presumed immutability of the classical landscape. Our landscape, today, is marked by a grim forewarning. Disasters and inevitable transformations : a reality destined to slip through our fingers and escape us. But the evocation of sand artworks also irresistibly calls to mind Borges and his Book of Sand, a promise of endless stories, a work containing all works, annihilating time.

Sophie Langohr is a visual artist living and working in Liège, Belgium. Her work is based on the study and interpretation of artpieces from the past. She makes her own pictures and objects filled with history and express herself through their own modes of construction and self-production. Through a variety of re-manufacturing processes, she revisits, redirects and subverts them to make them speak in new ways, in new contexts.

link: https://www.sophielangohr.be/

from: Jester, Genk (BE)
to: Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (DE)

In the background is a family photograph, where the wax patterns on the garments worn by my relatives create a textile landscape rich with memory. Layered over this are images of red blood cells symbols of blood and transmission infusing the composition with organic density.

A 1753 engraving depicting a cosmogony of the universe is then superimposed, situating this identity within a broader, spiritual, and mythical dimension. Finally, the words “No, no, we have our name.”, taken from an interview with my father about our family tree, assert the existence and continuity of our lineage.

Anthony Ngoya is an artist whose work explores the intersection of personal history, cultural heritage, and spiritual narratives. Through a diverse range of media, including visual art and digital storytelling, Ngoya creates immersive experiences that weave together themes of identity, memory, and belonging. His practice draws deeply from his own family lineage, merging ancestral symbols and contemporary expressions to reflect on the complexities of selfhood. Ngoya’s work invites viewers to engage with the layers of culture and blood that shape who we are, offering a poignant reflection on the evolution of identity and the power of storytelling.

link: www.thegreatmisunderstanding.com

from: Nieuwe Domein, Sittard (NL)
to: Art au Centre, Liege (BE)

Pigeons are our oldest companion species. Since we first domesticated them more than 10.000 years ago pigeons have been considered symbols of peace, war heroes, hunted pests, and sacred messengers. Once our technological advancements substituted the pigeon´s service, we discarded them. Now the pigeon roams our streets alongside us, living in and off our dirt – depending on our infrastructures.

The pigeon´s ambiguity reflects the seemingly contradicting ways in which we share spaces – with each other and other species.

This flagseeks to capture the double standards and the contradiction of how we relate to pigeons (other species), and each other – how we pick and chose who has access to which space and under which circumstances. We see the circle of stars of the EU flag scattered – a circle that includes and excludes. And a pigeon cast from white wax and mixed with street dirt – a symbol of peace and dirty pest.

Helena is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. Her work spans large-scale multimedia installations, performance, painting, and objects/ sculptures. Most recently, Helena intervenes with her flock of wax-cast pigeons to invite open-ended questioning of the ambiguous ways in which we share (urban) spaces.

The flag is part of Helena´s ongoing artistic research on The Great Misunderstanding. Through the lens of the pigeon, she researches the seemingly contradicting ways in which we share urban spaces with each other, other species, and our inanimate environment. Born in UK, Helena grew up in Vienna, Austria. She is based between the Netherlands and Vienna. Helena is a recent graduate of interdisciplinary Arts (iArts) at the Maastricht Institute of Arts.

link: www.thegreatmisunderstanding.com

from: Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (DE)
to: La Châtaigneraie, Flémalle (BE)

Dean Sameshima’s Anonymous Portrait works, an ongoing series of painted and printed compositions that the artist began in 2018. Inspired by the first page of John Rechy’s 1977 novel The Sexual Outlaw —which the author dedicated‘to all the anonymous outlaws’—Sameshima’s series references titles from the artist’s personal library of queer, art historical, and critical texts, using each work’s distinct typeface literally and figuratively positioned under a broader umbrella of anonymity. Similar in form and seriality to On Kawara’s Date Paintings, Sameshima’s Anonymous Portraits likewise allow the viewer to project their own impressions onto allusions specific to the paintings’ creator. In this way, Sameshima not only transposes the subjective into the universal, but also preserves a queer archive so frequently discarded due to censorship and fear of discovery.-Text courtesy of PPOW, New York

Dean Sameshima (1971, Torrance, CA) studied at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA and subsequently at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Sameshima’s works are in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Cantor Arts Center of Stanford University, Stanford and the Museo de Arte São Paulo, São Paulo. He was honored with the Artist Acquisition Club Award in 2022. The artist lives and works in Berlin.

link: https://deansameshima.com/

from: Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren (DE)
to: Nieuwe Domein, Sittard (NL)

The Cologne-based artist Katharina Jahnke explores how architecture, images, text, ornament, and form shape our perception, our thinking, and our relationship to reality. At the core of her artistic practice is the principle of collage—bringing together image systems from diverse origins and meanings into a cohesive, overarching visual language. This method allows her to create fantastical, conceptually unified worlds that are both visually compelling and intellectually rich.

Her contribution to What the Flag?! reflects this approach: she merges views of spiraling staircases into a harmonious flow of movement—only to disrupt it with the presence of a spider in its web. The result is a striking tension between dynamic elegance and symbolic entrapment, questioning the paths we follow and the structures we inhabit.

Born in Berlin in 1968, Katharina Jahnke studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach and at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her career includes numerous prestigious grants and residencies, such as the travel grant from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, a DAAD scholarship in Los Angeles, a residency at the German Study Center in Venice, the studio grant from the Kölnischer Kunstverein, and work grants from Kunststiftung NRW and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Alongside her artistic practice, she is actively engaged in art education, having held teaching positions at institutions including Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and Folkwang University of the Arts.

link: https://katharinajahnke.com/

from: La Châtaigneraie, Flémalle (BE)
to: Kunsthaus NRW, Kornelimünster (DE)

Lola Reynaerts; “Social media gives us the illusion of closeness, while this connection often remains superficial.
With a simple click, we gain access to events happening on the other side of the world.

How does this change our perception of the world ?
What impact does it have on our lives ?
Have we become more supportive, more responsive ?

Sometimes, a single post or reaction is enough to feel like we’ve participated, and for some, as if they’ve taken political action.

In my view, this behavior mostly reinforces passive individualism, the kind we practice from the “couch,” where we take a stance without confronting others or engaging with opposing views. In contrast, art, in all its forms, leads us to debate, to exchange, to converse. It brings us together around an emotion, a feeling, whether shared or not. Isn’t that why we call them the performing arts?

In a concert hall, human connection flows in every direction : between the artists and the audience, energy is shared. If that connection doesn’t happen, the concert won’t have the same intensity. And it’s afterward, perhaps, that social media finds its place, its role as a “connector” : it allows us to extend the emotion we felt, to tell and share what we experienced, together, in real life.”

link: http://lolareynaerts.com/

from: Art au Centre, Liege (BE)
to: Greylight Projects, Heerlen (NL)

A fleeting moment in time is captured through the process of cyanotype printing on fabric. For her contribution to What the Flag?!, Alicia Kremser is developing a flag using cyanotype, a light-sensitive technique in which the image forms only at the site of installation. The flag is installed in darkness and becomes visible through exposure to sunlight. Rain or morning dew naturally fixes the image, with no further processing needed.

This approach turns the flag into a direct imprint of time, light, and weather conditions at the location where it is displayed. Kremser previously experimented with this technique on a beach, where sun and strong wind produced an evenly blue flag, while a test piece created on a calm day revealed a more dynamic pattern.

For What the Flag?!, she will explore durable fabrics suitable for outdoor use to create a new flag that, like her earlier work, functions as both a performative object and a time-bound document.

link: …