Blurred Lines: Jiho Won
“If Scotland becomes independent, the blue part representing Scotland will disappear from the Union Jack”
This was something a British classmate said to me during my studies in the UK while reading a daily newspaper. The way he said it so matter-of-factly shocked me. The flag changes… I realised he was right. The Union Jack is a symbol made by combining flags of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. I wondered, Why had this flag, which is flexible and can change with political shifts, always felt like an unchanging, absolute image in my mind? Naturally, my thoughts turned to Korea, and my eyes fell on two flags there.
The massive flags installed throughout the streets of London were initially striking and beautiful. Especially during national events, when Regent Street would be practically covered with thousands of flags, the sight was overwhelming. But over time, I began to feel uneasy about them. Flagpoles mounted on building walls without flags (wall-mounted flagpoles) began to look like erect male organs.
This led me to question why London had so many flags and, more importantly, what the flags really meant. Flags are tools that visually symbolise a group’s identity, allowing people to recall a shared image when they think of that group. They are symbols of distinction, and historically, they have even been used as weapons. The fact that such an aggressive object still exists in the same form today felt ironic. This curiosity became the starting point for my project, A Flagless Society.
At first, I used a pipe bender to physically bend flagpoles downward, shaping them into forms resembling flaccid male organs, and titled the piece Peaceful Moment. But I found that this kind of external, forceful transformation still felt aggressive. It reminded me of paradoxical slogans like “War for Peace,” or the historical images of Lenin statues being toppled after the Soviet collapse, Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq after the Gulf War, or acts of iconoclasm where protesters set fire to another country’s flag.
I wondered if there might be another approach. One day, while riding a double-decker bus and lost in thought, I noticed scaffolding structures, commonly called “ashiba”. In London, due to laws protecting the facades of old buildings, scaffolding is installed to preserve the exterior while careful construction or restoration takes place, unlike Korea where old buildings are simply demolished. These structures were everywhere, and I became curious about them
When I researched scaffolding, I discovered that it is an ancient technique, used widely from 5th century Egypt to Greece and China. After World War II, large-scale reconstruction was needed across damaged British cities. To meet this sudden demand, modular scaffolding systems were developed for mass production, and this design has been in use ever since.
Scaffolding is installed temporarily for new construction, repairs, or demolition, allowing workers to carry out their tasks. The meaning embedded in scaffolding; the planned, temporary nature combined with almost limitless potential for extension, felt compelling to me. This was when I began to incorporate scaffolding structures to my work.