African American Flag reimagines the United States flag, replacing its colors with the red, green, and black of the Pan-African Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded in 1914. Hammons created this version—one in an edition of ten—for an exhibition at Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City in 1990. The installation featured African American Flag as well as the flags of South Korea and Yemen, each suspended above an oil drum containing a block of ice that gradually melted. Titled Who’s Ice Is Colder, the presentation slyly parodied the rivalries that existed among residents from the three communities over the ownership of neighborhood corner stores and bodegas throughout New York City.

Gallery label from

2024

Medium Canvas and grommets
Dimensions 59 × 94 1/2" (149.9 × 240 cm)
Edition 10 (This edition was the second version of Hammons's African American Flag.)
Credit Promised gift to The Museum of Modern Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem by the Hudgins Family in memory of Jack Tilton
Object number PG501.2017
Department Painting & Sculpture

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David Hammons

David Hammons

American, born 1943 21 works online

David Hammons once commented that “outrageously magical things happen when you mess around with a symbol." For the past 50 years, Hammons has created a vocabulary of symbols from everyday life and messed around with them in the form of prints, drawings, performances, video, found-object sculptures, and paintings.

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