Separate – flags

The symbol used on the flag is a drawing featured on Dwa/Pół [Two/Half], from the Obrusy/Tablecloths series), created during the first lockdown. The image features a frequently used, well-known hand gesture, the victory sign (“V for Victory”), and indicates the distance between the fingers. The symbol captures the frustration and helplessness shared by many during the first lockdown. The victory sign was popularised by Winston Churchill as a gesture of faith in the possibility of winning WWII. In the late 1960s, it was used by hippies protesting against the Vietnam War. From the 1980s, we equate it with the Solidarity movement in Poland. It is a symbol of hope associated with pivotal moments in history.

The end of WWII was the beginning of Europe’s division into East and West. The beginning of another totalitarianism. The Solidarity breakthrough in Poland ushered in privatisation and rampant capitalism. The UK voted in favour of Brexit and Trump won the US presidential election, equating politics with business. Putin began the annexation of Crimea. The coronavirus pandemic divided the world between online and real, which began to threaten health and life. Climate catastrophe became inevitable.

In the face of these events, the familiar symbol of victory appears naïve.

Order is only attainable through the exclusion of other possibilities. In politics, the pretence that chaos is desirable was dropped in order to achieve set goals. Polarisation, division, pitting one social group against another. Pitting people with different views against each other. Taking advantage of ethnic, racial, non-binary and gender minorities to create myopic value systems. Isolation, separation, quarantine.

The world has been divided and this will never change again. The two fingers in the gesture of victory have been separated. They describe reality as it is. Difficult, contradictory, unbearable. And yet, these two separate fingers still belong to a gesture that symbolises hope.

Following the presidential election, and an electoral campaign with elements of promoting hate speech, the flags with the V sign take on a new critical tone. However, it has turned out that evil can have even bigger horns. The Constitutional Court’s procedure of the anti-abortion law during the second wave of the pandemic turned out to be quite the Machiavellian plot. 

The parliamentary majority’s actions led people out onto the streets, putting them at risk of losing their health and lives. The Deputy Prime Minister made an address pitting one section of society against another, ignoring the state’s responsibility to care for its citizens. The symbol appearing on another pandemic flag from the period of the second lockdown is widely known as the symbol of the devil, mainly associated with the heavy metal subculture. But it can also have other meanings, depending on religion and nationality. It can also mean love or worship. Mam gest / Nice Gestures is Drożyńska’s second COVID-19 flag. It says: be careful, don’t trust, check. Politics is a war waged with the populist language of care. Stay close to your loved ones. The flags have been presented as part of Biennale Warszawa, at Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, Galeria Arsenał in Poznań, BWA in Katowice, Zielona Góra, Tarnów, Galeria Bielska, Biuro Wystaw, BWA Wrocław Główny, Trafostacja in Szczecin, Krakauer Haus in Nuremberg, in London, Tel Aviv, and Liverpool.