Joyce Wieland 1931 - 1998

The 1960s were a crucial decade for Wieland: during this time she moved to New York, gained popularity and success, and began to experiment with new materials. It was also at this time that her preoccupations regarding notions of femininity, nationalism – especially Canadian patriotism – and ecological concerns became fully developed. This untitled work from 1964 is an enthralling example of this process of intellectual and creative maturation.

In keeping with her exploration of untraditional media, Wieland had begun to use objects that women typically interacted with on a daily basis as a medium for her work. In this particular piece, Wieland employed a mason jar in which the small American flag is "preserved". Wieland aggressively questioned the dominance of traditional – in feminist art theory, often read as male – materials of high art through her use of domestic, often craft, materials. Inherent in this challenge is the redefinition of what an "artistic creation" could be, and what that term meant. In this piece, Wieland begins to construct her argument through her use of non-traditional, distinctly feminine elements. This challenge is one that would come to define her career, and much of the work in her oeuvre.

The water and even the flag, too, have feminine connotations. In later works involving the American flag, Wieland directly references Betsy Ross and the female origins of this typically male symbol. Additionally, immersed in the water, the flag loses its masculine solidity and becomes flaccid. Water as a transformative element is a recurring theme in Wieland's work across all mediums: from her sinking sailboat paintings (1963-4), to Water Quilt (1970-1), to her feature film The Far Shore (1975), water has played an important role in Wieland's work. In such works, water refers to notions of femaleness as well as death and rebirth. Water frequently washes Wieland's subjects clean of guilt and fear, and returns them to innocence – a symbolic rebirth. In this piece, the American flag, a symbol of masculinity as well as the American culture which Wieland had become thoroughly disenchanted with, is undergoing a process of cleansing and rebirth through total immersion in the female essence, although it seems permanently stuck in a state of limbo: forever washed, but never clean.

Wieland's work frequently thrives on a tension between seeming polarities, and this work is no exception. In this piece exists tensions between the masculine/feminine, death/rebirth, and the more directly tangible solid/liquid. A struggle is occurring between the two elements – the solid, hard flag, and the fluid, sensuous water – and yet synthesis is the only possible outcome. In the forty-eight years since this work was created, the flag has clearly been disintegrating into the water, and will continue to do so: an eventual fusion is inevitable. Wieland's work epitomizes integration of supposed polar opposites, and in this piece, we stand witness to that integration as process.