symbols

Guillaume Vandame

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About the Artwork

symbols (2019-2021) is a sculptural installation consisting of 30 unique flags from the LGBTQ+ community. Spanning the original Pride Flag designed by Gilbert Baker in San Francisco in 1978 to its newest iteration by Daniel Quasar in 2018, the flags represent the diversity of gender, sexuality, and desire. The flags are standardised and ordinary, each five feet by three feet, and hang equidistant to represent the equal value and potential each community group has in the world today.

Following the recent death of Baker in 2017 and President Trump’s banning of the Pride Flag at U.S. embassies internationally, alongside the global absence of Pride during the pandemic and increased hostility and violence towards the LGBTQ+ community, symbols celebrates the joy and freedom to love who you love while acknowledging the struggles these community groups have endured to gain visibility, human rights, and equality.

Year: 2019-2021


Copyright the artist. Photo: © Nick Turpin

Material

Flags

Dimensions

Variable

Artist Biography

Guillaume Vandame

Guillaume Vandame (b. 1991, New York) is a French-American artist based in London. His practice is interested in expanding ideas of language and meaning through a conceptual, queer and socially engaged aesthetic. Vandame has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions including fig-2 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Whitechapel Gallery, London, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, and he presented 'Notice Me (LGBTQIA+ Walk)' for Nocturnal Creatures 2019 in partnership with Sculpture in the City and Whitechapel Gallery, London. In collaboration with Josh Wright, he took part in the Open House 2019-2020 artist residency at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, engaging with over 3,000 individuals to explore community and wellbeing, and he recently took part in an artist residency at Union Chapel, London between 2020 and 2021.