The Flag, the Sign, and the Ethics of Meaning
This text is not written out of animosity toward a symbol, nor with the aim of negating history, nor from disagreement with an expired mode of governance such as monarchy—and certainly not from poetic daydreaming or euphoria. Rather, it comes from a much simpler place: from the sensitivity that every artist has, or must have, toward the meaning and social function of a sign. If they lack this sensitivity, it should be examined as a cultural problem in its own right.
For over two decades, I have faced threats, kidnapping, boycott, and intimidation from the monarchies of sheikhs and shahs, and from their devoted servants. For years, I have chosen isolation over collaboration with mercenary media and the tainted practitioners of official culture, both inside and outside the country. Therefore, there is nothing left to stop someone like me from speaking what I know to be the truth—except a devoted soul, which, in a world full of death and commerce, is not so precious after all.
In the present text, contrary to the common tradition of theoretical writing, I have tried to rely as little as possible on explicit names, sources, and citations. This choice is not out of disregard for theoretical tradition, but is conscious and deliberate. In fact, avoiding academic centricity here does not mean a lack of foundation; rather, it is an attempt to let meaning take shape and be interpreted through direct engagement with the reader, before being referred back to authority. Thus, although names are absent, I emphasize that no statement in this text has been written without intellectual and historical lineage.
I am a painter. And for a painter, signs are never neutral.We may pass by signs indifferently, but signs do not treat us with indifference; they penetrate our lives and our decisions decisively and without asking permission.
I write this text as a letter-a letter to the people of my time and to those who will come after. Not to change public opinion, but to remind us of the responsibility that every sign carries when it moves from the individual or group sphere into the mass or national arena. In fact, a respectable and dignified symbol can easily, once imposed at a national level, lead to catastrophes that once again crush generations under the weight of power.
When a sign becomes collective, it is no longer merely an image; it becomes a social act. And every social act, inevitably, affects bodies, voices, destinies, and the possibilities of living. When a sign passes beyond the level of “seeing,” it is no longer just an image or an object; it becomes something toward which one must take a position: it must be respected, defended, its violation considered an insult, and sometimes even died for. This is where an artwork, a logo, a statue, or even a name enters the realm of idolatry.
At this point, several transformations occur simultaneously.First, the sign moves away from interpretability; it no longer allows individuals, groups, or generations to freely inscribe their own meanings onto it, but instead weighs upon their existence from birth. Second, the sign acquires a kind of functional sanctity-not necessarily religious, but social-such that disrespect toward it is perceived as disrespect toward a collective “we.” This is where the repressive face of the sign becomes visible.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the sign replaces dialogue. Instead of being a point of departure for thinking, it becomes a point of termination. This is where the sign ceases to be a national symbol and becomes a national threat. A statue that is no longer merely a statue, but has assumed the role of an idol.
It must be remembered that an idol is not necessarily something worshipped or respected by every member of the tribe. An idol is something that cannot be passed by, cannot be doubted-an object whose presence weighs heavily upon human life. A sign that cannot be criticized, set aside, or even imagined as absent one day-regardless of whether it is labeled “national,” “historical,” or “cultural”-has assumed an idolatrous function. At that point, it is nothing but an instrument of repression and superstition.
It makes no difference what we elevate to the status of a supreme idol above human beings. The issue is that even the most beautiful, humane, and noble concepts become heavy once they are presented as compulsory and eternal. And the weight of meaning suffocates.
It is especially important to note that the primary function of a sign is not to carry meaning-that is, merely to present something for interpretation-but rather to direct interpretation. Signs guide the trajectory of meaning and draw the boundaries of interpretation-consciously or unconsciously-in specific ways. Put simply, every sign is a fence around a semantic world.
No sign inherently carries a fixed meaning. The connection between the form of a sign and its concept is neither natural nor necessary; it is contractual and historical. Meaning is not located within the image itself, but constructed through networks of agreements, habits, information, and social relations. For this reason, every attempt to fix a sign as a “final meaning” or a “definitive identity” is, in practice, an attempt to close the space of freedom and to appropriate interpretive authority in favor of an official order.
When a sign is elevated to an official, universal, and unquestionable status, it no longer even belongs to the realm of language or art; it becomes an instrument of social ordering-if not outright an instrument of interrogation and ideological enforcement. In such conditions, the issue is no longer the sign itself, but the power that freezes meaning through it and renders dissent costly. What has been described as “normalizing power” operates precisely at this level: not through naked force, but by stabilizing one interpretation as self-evident and transforming all others into deviation.
With this in mind, what matters to me as a human being and as an artist is not the political or media techniques used to stabilize an order or a symbol, but the aesthetic consequences of this process. For this reason, I find it necessary to articulate more clearly several specific artistic and cultural dimensions of the issue.
Artistic and Aesthetic Dimensions
1. The Flag as a Collective Visual Form and Background of Life
In visual culture, the flag is one of the few forms that must be read from a distance, in motion, and without explanation. Unlike artworks or narrative signs, a flag does not allow for pause, prolonged interpretation, or reference to accompanying text. From the perspective of design and visual arts, such a form necessarily gravitates toward visual silence and minimal sign density. The more collective the function of an image, the more restrained, open, and unornamented its form must be.
Modern artistic movements-from Bauhaus to contemporary graphic design-consistently emphasize this principle: forms intended for public use should not carry heavy narrative loads, storytelling, or complex references. At this scale, excess detail is not richness; it is interference. Narrative-heavy forms, rather than creating a shared field, unintentionally force the viewer into a position.
From this perspective, the flag should function as a background, not as a subject. In any visual composition, some elements must recede so others can emerge. When the background becomes the subject, all other elements are forced to react, and the entire field of meaning is organized around that dominant element. A healthy flag is the background of collective life-not its judge.
When a flag becomes overly prominent, emblematic, or narrative-laden, it leaves the background and becomes a dominant subject. In this situation, social life no longer unfolds in front of the flag; it is compelled to respond to it. This seemingly formal shift has profound consequences: the flag ceases to frame life and instead becomes a criterion for judgment, valuation, and meaning.
From an aesthetic standpoint, defending simplicity and silence in a flag is not a defense of emptiness; it is a defense of shared space. A space in which individuals and generations can live without constant positioning, without perpetual explanation, and without being subjected to the evaluative gaze of a central image. The more a flag remains in the background, the more life can occupy the foreground.
2. Aesthetic Ethics and the Distribution of the Sensible
In contemporary art, the issue is no longer simply what is beautiful, but what is allowed to be considered beautiful. Here, beauty shifts from a matter of taste to an ethical question. Whenever a form, image, or sign is stabilized as the official representative of “us,” other sensibilities are inevitably rendered invisible or undesirable.
This mechanism determines what can be seen, what can be heard, what counts as meaningful, and what is denied visibility altogether. In the art and entertainment world, artistic journalism often serves as a promotional arm of the art market and the dominant cultural sector. In the case of state or governmental symbols, however, this function operates differently-mediated through historical and social factors, yet still largely through journalism, albeit in broader public layers.
From this perspective, aesthetics is never neutral, and we never encounter it innocently through media. Media generally calibrates its standards of beauty according to the demands of its patrons-power included-and enacts them accordingly. This is how art remains entangled with the politics of visibility and invisibility, of what can be said and what must remain unsaid.
When a specific sign is fixed as a national symbol, the distribution of the sensible becomes centralized-openly and officially, not even softly or entertainingly. What does not align with that sign becomes invisible-not merely “different,” but “out of place,” “inappropriate,” or even “illegitimate.” At this point, the issue is no longer a disagreement in taste; it is the imposition of a single sensory regime upon the diversity of lived experience.
From the standpoint of aesthetic ethics, the fundamental question is this:
Does anyone have the right to impose their visual experience, their visual memory, and their imaginative horizon upon others? And if such imposition occurs at a collective or national scale, can its result be anything other than the narrowing of possibilities for seeing, living, and imagining?
This is where the sign shifts from being an inspiring element to an instrument of sensory surveillance-a system that pre-decides who belongs within the frame and who remains outside it.
3. Historical Memory versus Collective Imagination
Culture is not only ancient artifacts, pottery, epic poetry, carpets, or inherited legacies. Culture is not only memory; it is imagination as well. It is poems not yet written, paintings not yet made, revolutions not yet realized, and social relations not yet healed.
Memory preserves the past; imagination constructs the future. Heavy historical signs tend to reinforce memory, often at the expense of future-oriented imagination. In such cases, the past functions not as a source of inspiration, but as a compulsory framework. Art history repeatedly demonstrates this tension. Many styles were revolutionary at birth-radical breaks with tradition, driven by artists who invested their own lives into them. Yet once stabilized, these revolutionary methods hardened into tradition, and the former revolutionaries became distant authorities.
Cubism, for example, began as a radical attempt to break dominant perspective and rethink vision itself. But once institutionalized, it quickly became a “style,” then a “standard.” At that point, artists who attempted to push the language further-or dismantle it from within-were no longer seen as pioneers, but as deviant, obscure, or incompetent.
This pattern is not limited to Cubism. Across many twentieth-century movements-from early avant-gardes to later currents such as graffiti-we see how liberatory experiences, once institutionalized, become frozen memory, absorbed by power and market alike, drained of vitality until new revolutionaries are compelled to sacrifice themselves once more. This is the process by which memory-oriented signs are imposed upon culture: instead of opening new horizons, they close them.
It is easy to see why this function-closing collective imagination-is a top priority for authoritarian regimes. To close imagination is to secure power at minimal cost.
It must be stated clearly: tradition, when left unexamined, becomes an instrument of domination-when the past is invoked not for dialogue, but to legitimize the present. In such conditions, the future is consumed in advance. A society that installs a historical identity and heritage in place of an open, national identity seeks freedom not in future possibilities, but in recycling failed and exhausted patterns. It is precisely here that freedom, before it has any chance to be born, is required to prove its loyalty before the national symbol-and since this is impossible, it is condemned, by whatever means necessary.
From a cultural perspective, the question is not whether the past is valuable. The question is whether the past allows collective imagination to breathe. Signs burdened with excessive historical weight often deny this possibility. Rather than transforming the past into material for imagination, they turn it into a wall against which the future must either lean-or crash.
In this sense, defending the lightness of signs is not a defense of forgetting; it is a defense of imagination-the very condition every living culture requires to survive.
4. The Body as the Primary Field of the Sign
In visual culture, signs act upon bodies before they become law or discourse. The body is the first site to be seen, read, and judged. Before anyone speaks or declares a position, their body-through clothing, gesture, presence, or absence of signs-enters the field of meaning.
When a flag bearing a heavy, narrative-laden sign is fixed as a national symbol, its meaning does not remain abstract. The flag descends from buildings and settles onto bodies. Bodies are involuntarily drawn into relation with the sign: Do they display it or not? If not, why? If they keep their distance, how is that distance interpreted?
Here, the body is no longer neutral. Even silence or indifference acquires meaning. The heavy sign renders bodies “readable”: the aligned body, the hesitant body, the suspicious body. This judgment occurs prior to any written law-where the image delivers its verdict before the court.
Contemporary art history has repeatedly exposed this logic. Performance art and body art begin precisely here: revealing how bodies are assigned meaning before being heard. Feminist art has shown again and again how bodies are subjected to judgment and control simply through their relation to dominant signs and norms.
The same mechanism operates in subcultures: hairstyles, clothing, or lifestyle choices render bodies immediately judgeable-prior to any action or violation. These everyday examples show that the fixation of signs engages bodies before it limits minds.
From this perspective, a flag such as the lion-and-sun is not merely a disagreement over a historical image. The issue is that such a sign, saturated with mythic and historical narrative, forces bodies into positions. Bodies that do not align with the narrative-whether due to different historical experiences or unresolved decisions-are pushed outside the frame and, as we can clearly observe, are threatened, intimidated, or erased.
Thus, the emblematic flag becomes not only an abstract symbol, but a bodily metric-a device that measures loyalty, distance, or doubt upon human flesh. This is the point where the sign exits the realm of the image and becomes a mechanism of preemptive judgment-without a single law being written, the sign silently summons the interrogator or the executioner.
5. The Lightness of the Sign as the Possibility of Coexistence
Where signs are lighter, meanings are softer, and people breathe more easily. The lightness of a collective sign-especially a national flag-does not mean the absence of meaning, but the refusal to finalize it. A light sign does not place itself at the center of life; it keeps the field open so individuals and generations can redefine their relation to it through lived experience and time.
In societies where signs become overly prominent and heavy, images gradually replace life itself. The sign ceases to be background and becomes the main stage, demanding response. Life is reduced to performance, and people unwittingly play roles written in advance. Here, the sign no longer preserves meaning; it consumes lived experience.
This is not hostility toward signs. Signs can inspire, humanize, and liberate. The white dove carrying an olive branch, for example, is among the most universal symbols of reconciliation and the cessation of violence. But precisely for this reason, such a sign is unsuitable for fixation as an official emblem. Even the most exalted signs, once rendered universal and compulsory, shift from invitation to loyalty test. What was meant to be possibility becomes demand.
The consequences of heavy signs extend beyond the symbolic level. As meanings become fixed and sacred, the capacity for free experience, play, error, and self-creation in everyday life diminishes. Rigid signs erode the joy of living by denying fluid, provisional relations with the world. Life is forced to align itself with meanings defined in advance.
Freedom, contrary to popular belief, is not produced by reinforcing signs, but by opening spaces. Freedom requires emptiness-intervals that have not yet been named, appropriated, or represented. These empty spaces enable new experiences, new forms of coexistence, and unpredictable futures. Any sign that fills this space-even with good intentions-ultimately suffocates it.
This is why nationalizing any sign constitutes an act of violence against a society’s future. It occupies the shared field in advance and constrains rather than frames the possibility of living. This is not a condemnation of individuals or intentions; it is a warning about a mechanism that delivers coexistence into closed orders instead of opening it.
From the perspective of a citizen, an artist who celebrates life, and a dreamer hopeful for humanity’s future, this situation is alarming. Where signs are fortified, imagination retreats. Curious and forward-thinking individuals are forced to justify and defend themselves before being heard, because any formal deviation or distance carries a predetermined ethical or political burden.
Let us not allow future generations to be crushed beneath another symbol. Let us not spend more lives defending anything other than life itself. We are close to freedom-but without vigilance, we will never reach it.
Freedom, before it is a slogan, is an empty space; a space that, once filled with a sign, leaves no room for the human.
Karan Reshad – Winter 2026
