Jeremy Dean (b. 1977, American)

Executive Order 13769, 2018
Threads from the Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and American flags; 25,000 needles; custom frame.

48 x 72 inches

Commissioned for Rabbit Hole Distillery, Louisville, KY

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” - Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

The overlapping colors of the eight country flags create shifting perspectives of these symbols of nationhood. Dean suggests that the work can be seen as a metaphor for “restitching our connectiveness,” further suggesting that our “connection to others can be severed but not forgotten.” This is a fundamental aspect of human nature that we may lose sight of at times but is never really gone.

Dean’s painterly approach to subtracting colors from each flag and the layering of familiar colors (red, white, and blue) challenge us to reconsider our preconceived notions and belief systems. This ‘color deception’ is at the heart of Dean’s work.

“He who claims to see colors independent of their illusionary changes fools only himself and no one else.” - Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963

Dean began his aptly titled Rended series in 2004, painstakingly unweaving string by string a single American flag and reassembling it as separate flags made only of the vertical (warp) and horizontal (weft) strings, respectively. One of his most complex assemblages to date, this work was created over a six-month period in response to President Trump’s Executive Order 13769, signed into action in January 2017, barring citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.