Absentia consisted of a narrow, white-washed brick building with a steeply pitched slate roof, a twenty-five-foot tall flagpole, and a flag reading “NON.” This flag of refusal was based upon 1959 etching by Marcel Duchamp. In The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (cat no. 570), Arturo Schwartz states that original etching: “epitomizes Duchamp’s philosophy of life: a neat refusal of all academic strictures, all calls for moral or aesthetic conformity.”

In adapting Duchamp’s “NON,” French for no, to a flag, I imagined making it a larger statement of refusal, which includes its many usages as a prefix in the English-language: nonsense, nonconformist, nonaligned, nonconformist, nonbeliever, nonviable, nonaligned, nonpartisan, nonobjective, nonparticipant, nonviolent, nonspecific, nondescript, nonaggression, nonperforming, nonspecific. No, No, No. Non.

The title of the work, Absentia, refers to the missing subject who raised the flag and broke through the building’s wall. It also points to that same subject’s refusal to participate in the indignities of everyday life. If the national flag is a sign of belonging, NON—a flag of refusal—is a dismissal of the very notion of belonging raised from within the confines of a constricted life.