British Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong created this flag – the Pan African Flag for The Relic Travellers’ Alliance – in 2017. The appliqué flag features 54 stars to represent Africa’s 54 nations. The colours too are symbolic: green, black and red each represent the land, the people, and their struggle, while gold looks to Africa’s future prosperity and a new chapter for the continent. Achiampong originally conceived of the flag as part of a broader, ongoing body of work that includes performance, audio, a series of films and text. The flag was first flown from
the roof of Somerset House, where Achiampong’s former studio was located, and has since flown from historic landmarks across the UK. Made the year after Brexit, with rising feelings of Nationalism and anti-migration in the UK, the flag is an emblem of the possibility of solidarity and unity, inspired by the Africa Union’s Africa Passport programme, posited in 2016, the same year as Brexit. Achiampong’s flag remains ever more resonant today, in our divided times, a slip of brightly-coloured hope buffeted by the breeze.

A new monograph on Achiampong’s enthralling practice of the last decade, If It Don’t Exist, Build It, is published by Tate and is available now.

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