My Story is My Flag | Cristina Victor
(with Oakland International High School Students)

My Story is My Flag was a temporary public art project celebrating individual and collective identity through twelve colorful banners that were displayed on light posts along Telegraph Avenue in the Temescal Business District.

The banners were designed by Oakland International High School students and teachers working collaboratively with artist Cristina Victor who based the project on her ongoing practice of working with vexillology (the study of symbols and flags),

Oakland International High School is a unique school in that it is specifically dedicated to serving very recent immigrants to the United States. The population includes students from over thirty countries who speak more than thirty-two different languages.

The students worked in small collaborative groups to explore and represent their stories and aspects of their cultural and personal identities through shapes, colors and symbols. They then produced to-scale designs for the final banners, which were produced by Victor.

Seven of the twelve banner were designed by the students and their teachers and Victor designed five additional banners to extend the conceptual and visual impact of the project.