Subject to the tide (After David Hammons), 2018-2025 Twill flag, salvaged fence from Africville 11 x 6 x 1 ft
Inspired by Hammons’ famed transformation of the American flag, this installation reimagines the Canadian flag in the Black Nationalist tricolour created by Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 1920s — red for the blood of Black people, black for our skin and racial identity, and green for the verdant lands of Africa.
The flag is integrated with a fence salvaged from the shores of the Bedford Basin in Africville, Nova Scotia, becoming a powerful symbol of cultural reclamation, unity, and the resilience of Africville—a Black community forcibly displaced in the 1960s that remains a poignant marker of systemic erasure in Canada.
