Joyce Burstein

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

Documentation of the ongoing project flag of the night sky, star parts of American flags sewn together, incrementally added to, unveiled in public, documented and archived. 2010 Action shown, on bronze equestrian monument to Joan of Arc by Anna Hyatt
Huntington, at The Legion of Honor SF, CA. Framed, with star fragment of American flag.

Joyce Burstein explores self-created contexts for public art with interactive objects that function as sculpture and action, both permanently sited and ephemeral / time based. Long term documentation archives a dialogical situation with passersby and place. Her social sited projects attempt to contravene associations of the monument with history by presenting works that interact with the present.  In this way spectators are performers, the work exists as process and object, public and private.
One such ongoing project is the flag of the night sky. Star parts of American flags are sewn together to make a flag “I can unambiguously pledge allegiance to”. Incrementally added to over decades the subverted flag has reached architectural scale, developing in relation to its model, the night sky. Unveiled in public places, briefly and unannounced, passersby are offered an inexplicable event with which to draw their own conclusions. Burstein received her BFA/MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is a recipient of grants/fellowships from Art Matters, The Institute of Noetic Science, NYFA, Adolph and
Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Transart Experimental Workshop for Art and Anthropology; she lives and works in New York City.