For this 61st exhibition Paul R Jones, from North Wales offers us Baner Llecynnau.
Paul says: For Lands of the Free, I am presenting the flag Baner Llecynnau and a digital print that explores concepts of territoriality. The Baner Llecynnau employs the colours of the Welsh National Flag whilst also using structural elements from the flags of the Czech Republic, Palestine, and the Brunei Republican Rebellion. The digital print is part of a series I’ve made that explores the imagery associated with frontiers.
Frontiers serve as incubators for a volatile mix of expanding territorial ambitions and clashing identities. At these edges, flags are often raised, forcefully communicating ownership – both of the land and the future. They declare that this is where your reality ends, and our domain begins. The frontier, while often evoking picturesque tropes of promised lands, also harbors terror. It becomes a battleground where the colonial conquest poses a threat to all that is surveyed. The terror of the frontier lies in its power to completely erase native histories, entitlements, and deities. It transforms into a place where the indigenous people’s histories are wholly erased, becoming a haunting ‘site of terror.’
In essence, territoriality serves as an apparatus for establishing spatial systems of control. The symbiotic interplay of flags, frontiers, and territoriality reveals a complex narrative, where symbols of ownership and spatial dominance not only delineate borders but also highlight the delicate relationship between power, nationhood, and the ongoing struggle for control.