Flagpole Project

OPENING: March 8, 2025, 3-5pm – ArtYard Kingston

Celeste Fichter ‘Wind is in the Change’

ArtPort Kingston has invited artists, designers, makers, and thinkers to submit flag designs for our new Flagpole Project. Launching in Spring 2025, the Project will raise one original artist-made flag per month above ArtYard Kingston at 80 Smith Ave throughout 2025. Each new flag, raised in a communal ceremony, offers an opportunity to rethink the meaning and role of flags in contemporary society.

A flag is a powerful symbol–a human invention that serves both as a form of communication and a symbol of beauty, devotion, and reverence. As symbols of both unity and division, oneness and diversity, flags can evoke strong emotions, rally communities, and communicate ideas across vast distances. Historically, flags have represented nations, ideologies, and movements, but what do they mean to us now? How has their significance evolved? How might it continue to evolve over time?

Run as an open-call, the program seeks designs and flag-like artworks that explore the potential of the flag as a means of communication at this present moment. Applicants were asked to respond to a number of prompts, including: How can the format be reinvented as a tool for connection rather than division? How can a flag transcend traditional symbols of territory, ownership, and conflict? Can a flag be used to unify diverse ideas, communities, and cultures?

The project will launch on March 8, 2025 with an original flag design by inaugural artist Celeste Fichter (@celestefichter), and will be followed by the hoisting of a new flag per month throughout the year. Celeste Fichter’s Flag is a play on the phrase ‘change is in the wind’ that implies something new is coming our way. ‘Wind is in the Change’ suggests that the movement of the wind itself is the change. Part koan, part word play, the phrase on the flag can only be read when wind is present.

Follow @artportkingston on IG for more updates, and look out for future open-call opportunities to submit your flag design.

Celeste Fichter, 'Not Mots', 2017-2019 (Copy)

24/7 Gallery Presents…

Musical Chairs

An Installation by Felix Olivieri & Stefan Saffer

Opening Reception: March 8, 2025, 3-5pm

“Chairs are about status, power and control. That’s why we like them.”

– Colin McSwiggen, Academia Sinica

A collaborative exhibition from Kingston-based artists Felix Olivieri and Stefan Saffer, “Musical Chairs” is presented as the inaugural exhibition of ArtPort Kingston’s new 24/7 Gallery, which offers around-the-clock public access to rotating exhibitions via the Kingston art-center’s windowed foyer.

“Musical Chairs” presents a spectacle of sculpture, light, sound, and movement. Empty chairs are floating in the gallery box, hanging from the ceiling and colliding with each other. The golden surface of the chairs reflects light through a thick fog which occasionally fills the space, disappearing and abstracting the installation.

The installation’s three chairs represent, simultaneously, three different functions, positions, and social groups. From the chair’s perspective, any person taking a seat is represented by their buttocks, and all people are the same: the chair has no bias by which it ensures the support of its seat. Nevertheless, we have assigned, over centuries, different chair designs to different functions, ranks, and uses, starting with the throne. In his essay, “Against Chairs,” academic Colin McSwiggen writes “Not only are Chairs a health hazard, but they also have a problematic history that has inextricably tied them to our culture of status-obassed individualism.”

With “Musical Chairs,” the artists’ attempt to create a democratic view of the chairs based on their simple function stands (or hangs) in contrast to the hierarchical categorization by their users. The installation reflects this ongoing struggle for equality and power, while attempting to catalyze the impulse to rethink who we are by what chair we sit on–literally and figuratively–and who we want to sit at our table and why.

The exhibition will open with a free, public reception, coinciding with the launch of ArtPort Kingston’s Flag Pole Project, on March 8, 3-5pm at ArtYard Kingston - 80 Smith Avenue, Kingston NY 12401. Artists will be present and light refreshments will be provided. All are welcome!