Flag for the 250th, (2026)
Flag for the 250th, (2026). US G-Spec cotton interment flag, embroidery thread, black-stained white oak, museum glass, automotive window tint
12 in. x 24 in. x 3.6 in.
On July 4, 2026, the United States turned two-hundred-fifty years old. Over the National Mall, the celebration took the form of an air parade nearly nine hours long, military aircraft crossing the sky every eighteen minutes above the Great American State Fair, until thunderstorms forced the crowds to shelter. Around six in the evening, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber appeared in a rare formation with the B-52 and the B-1, the country's three strategic bombers presented together, with the B-2 centering the spectacle.
In 2025, the stealth bomber began to be seen. On June 21st of that year, seven B-2s flew thirty-seven hours from Missouri and back to drop bunker-busting ordnance on Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer. Thirteen days later, on that year’s Fourth of July, a single B-2 crossed low over the White House lawn escorted by F-22s and F-35s while the pilots of the strike attended the picnic below as honored, unnamed guests. That August, when Vladimir Putin landed in Alaska, a B-2 passed over his red carpet. Throughout Trump’s second term the B-2 has become the administration's preferred emblem of unmatched American power, the image sent to the sky whenever the state wants to impose.
The B-2 is an aircraft developed in secret, it operates in secret, and it strikes from altitudes at which it exists only as a rumor. Yet its only public function today is performance. The bomber is seen only when the state elects to show it, and the showing is the message. The B-2 embodies an image of power that dictates the terms of its own visibility.
Flag for the 250th began as a United States government-specification all-cotton interment flag, the flag issued for military burials. Before anything else, I cut it apart, separating the canton, the blue field of stars, from the red and white stripes. Cutting is the first step in the flag's own protocol of disassembly, and once the union is removed from the stripes, the cloth is no longer understood as a flag. It ceases to be a government or ceremonial object, and becomes material again -cotton, dye, thread, something that can be worked. The rule exists to permit respectful destruction. I took it as permission to intervene. Only once the burial flag had stopped being a flag could something be sewn into cloth this guarded.
The work begins as a dissection, of the flag and of the idea. I had a B-2 embroidered across the stars in a grey thread matched as closely as we could manage to the coating of the aircraft itself. The cloth was then folded to match protocol and contained in a quarter-sawn white oak frame stained black, the museum glass darkened with automotive window tint.
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The folding ceremony ends in night. With each fold, stripes disappear. The final fold leaves only the blue field of stars visible, thus daylight changes into a night sky. The folded flag is then kept under watch through the night as a tribute to the nation's honored dead. The process of folding is a passing into night, and through the tinted glass I wanted the case to present the night the country has passed into.
In Flag for the 250th, the field of stars falls toward black and the bomber withholds itself. It is not legible head-on. It appears, obscured, at an angle or in raking light. The work does not depict stealth. It performs it. Behind the tint, that strain becomes the ceremony -to perceive the bomber, the audience must stand the night watch themselves.
The B-2 belongs among the stars, and by more than its celestial navigation. In the work, it operates as a false Polaris, the fixed point the rest of the world now turns around. The silhouette is entirely sharp angles, a geometry that flies in formation with the five points of the current flag’s stars. Set into the frame it reads almost related, a fifty-first member of the constellation, or a star gone wrong.
Fiona Banner's Harrier and Jaguar (2010) hung one fighter jet nose-down from the ceiling of Tate Britain, a captured bird, and laid another belly-up on the floor. Suspension requires removing an object from its understood context. Grounding, here, does the same in reverse. But the B-2's native context is indiscernible. There is nothing to remove it from. So, I have suspended the B-2 twice: once on the flag, held among the stars as if in flight, and once in potential visibility, at the limit where only the effort of the gaze retrieves it. A critic wrote of Banner's jets that a fighter plane in a gallery cannot hide its identity as a weapon of destruction -this one can. Hiding is its identity.
The official flag of the United States has been revised twenty-seven times since 1777. It is not a fixed image. It is an image amended, star by star, to keep describing the country's current shape. Flag for the 250th proposes the next revision. A flag for a nation whose true emblem is no longer the star but the bomber.
The interment flag is presented to the next of kin on behalf of a grateful nation. At two-hundred-fifty, I fold this one and present it back to the nation, to my kin.
In 2025, the stealth bomber began to be seen. On June 21st of that year, seven B-2s flew thirty-seven hours from Missouri and back to drop bunker-busting ordnance on Iranian nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer. Thirteen days later, on that year’s Fourth of July, a single B-2 crossed low over the White House lawn escorted by F-22s and F-35s while the pilots of the strike attended the picnic below as honored, unnamed guests. That August, when Vladimir Putin landed in Alaska, a B-2 passed over his red carpet. Throughout Trump’s second term the B-2 has become the administration's preferred emblem of unmatched American power, the image sent to the sky whenever the state wants to impose.
The B-2 is an aircraft developed in secret, it operates in secret, and it strikes from altitudes at which it exists only as a rumor. Yet its only public function today is performance. The bomber is seen only when the state elects to show it, and the showing is the message. The B-2 embodies an image of power that dictates the terms of its own visibility.
Flag for the 250th began as a United States government-specification all-cotton interment flag, the flag issued for military burials. Before anything else, I cut it apart, separating the canton, the blue field of stars, from the red and white stripes. Cutting is the first step in the flag's own protocol of disassembly, and once the union is removed from the stripes, the cloth is no longer understood as a flag. It ceases to be a government or ceremonial object, and becomes material again -cotton, dye, thread, something that can be worked. The rule exists to permit respectful destruction. I took it as permission to intervene. Only once the burial flag had stopped being a flag could something be sewn into cloth this guarded.
The work begins as a dissection, of the flag and of the idea. I had a B-2 embroidered across the stars in a grey thread matched as closely as we could manage to the coating of the aircraft itself. The cloth was then folded to match protocol and contained in a quarter-sawn white oak frame stained black, the museum glass darkened with automotive window tint.
In Flag for the 250th, the field of stars falls toward black and the bomber withholds itself. It is not legible head-on. It appears, obscured, at an angle or in raking light. The work does not depict stealth. It performs it. Behind the tint, that strain becomes the ceremony -to perceive the bomber, the audience must stand the night watch themselves.
The B-2 belongs among the stars, and by more than its celestial navigation. In the work, it operates as a false Polaris, the fixed point the rest of the world now turns around. The silhouette is entirely sharp angles, a geometry that flies in formation with the five points of the current flag’s stars. Set into the frame it reads almost related, a fifty-first member of the constellation, or a star gone wrong.
Fiona Banner's Harrier and Jaguar (2010) hung one fighter jet nose-down from the ceiling of Tate Britain, a captured bird, and laid another belly-up on the floor. Suspension requires removing an object from its understood context. Grounding, here, does the same in reverse. But the B-2's native context is indiscernible. There is nothing to remove it from. So, I have suspended the B-2 twice: once on the flag, held among the stars as if in flight, and once in potential visibility, at the limit where only the effort of the gaze retrieves it. A critic wrote of Banner's jets that a fighter plane in a gallery cannot hide its identity as a weapon of destruction -this one can. Hiding is its identity.
The official flag of the United States has been revised twenty-seven times since 1777. It is not a fixed image. It is an image amended, star by star, to keep describing the country's current shape. Flag for the 250th proposes the next revision. A flag for a nation whose true emblem is no longer the star but the bomber.
The interment flag is presented to the next of kin on behalf of a grateful nation. At two-hundred-fifty, I fold this one and present it back to the nation, to my kin.