United States of America — Native Nations

Within the familiar silhouette of the United States, the symbols of Indigenous nations appear as a field of signs—each carrying histories, cosmologies, and sovereignties that long precede the nation-state that now frames them. The outline of the country becomes a container for a deeper truth: that the land and its meanings were never singular. Here, the map operates as a signifier, while the emblems within it point to layered and enduring realities that resist containment by the national form.

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United States of America — Immigrant Cultures

A mosaic of national flags fills the outline of the United States, transforming the map into a collage of origins. Each flag is both a marker of elsewhere and a fragment of the American narrative. In this composition, the nation appears not as a fixed identity but as an accumulation of journeys. The flags function as signifiers of distant homelands, while the larger form suggests a shared but constantly evolving signified—an idea of America constructed through migration and exchange.

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United States of America — Inclusion

Here the nation dissolves into a constellation of human figures. Icons of gender, race, ability, and difference gather to form the recognizable outline of the country. The map becomes less a geography than an abstraction—a sign pointing toward an aspiration. In this arrangement, the people themselves become the signifiers, while the shape they collectively construct gestures toward the signified: America as an unfinished ideal, continually defined through the presence and recognition of those who inhabit it.