For the 2026 edition of Mayrit Bienal in Madrid, we presented The Weight of Identity, a project exploring how flags compress identity, history and ideology into a single form.

Founded by Spanish designer Miguel Leiro, Mayrit Bienal is a platform for contemporary, experimental and critical design. It brings together designers, artists and cultural practitioners to examine how the objects, spaces and systems we inhabit are produced, and how design can respond to the social and political questions shaping our world. The biennial creates space for emerging and established practices to test ideas, challenge conventions and consider design as a tool for cultural and political reflection.

Through this project, we explored the ways flags can unite and mobilise, while also dividing and excluding. They are fabrics of belonging and defiance, carrying tensions between resistance, nationalism, liberation and power. Their meanings are never fixed. They shift depending on who displays them, where they appear and the histories attached to them.

The Weight of Identity asks who has the power to define these symbols, how their meanings are inherited and what happens when they are reclaimed, reinterpreted or placed within new contexts. In doing so, the project reflects on the complex relationship between symbolism, collective memory and belonging.

Client: Mayrit Bienal
Location: Madrid, Spain
Status: Complete 
Sector: Design
Procurement: Private 
Team: Mary Whitaker, POoR