'I identified with these flags'

Using discarded Israeli flags, artist tries to stitch divided country together

Tal Tenne Czaczkes created ‘The Flag of Flags,’ a banner of nearly 700 pennants once abandoned on roadsides, now sewn into a giant canopy

Watching her country become more and more politically divided in recent years, artist Tal Tenne Czaczkes decided to unite it — at least in spirit.

Using gold thread, Tenne Czaczkes joined nearly 700 Israeli flags — a national symbol claimed in recent years by both the right and the left — into a 180-square-meter (1,937-square-foot) canopy that she says reflects both her personal journey over the last eight years and the country’s internal struggles.

Now the project, “The Flag of Flags,” is being displayed in locations nationwide, in what the artist hopes will be a public display of unity, resilience, and shared Israeli identity.

“The flag is for each of us, and each one of us has hope and a story,” said Tenne Czaczkes. “It represents each of us and our society.”

Eight years ago, Tenne Czaczkes began collecting abandoned, forgotten Israeli flags — often the smaller pennants that people attach to their cars and hang as bunting to mark Israel’s memorial and independence days.

It was Independence Day, and she had noticed teenagers in her hometown’s central square unintentionally trampling on decorative flags that had fallen to the ground.

That year marked Israel’s 70th anniversary, and Tenne Czaczkes, a graduate of Jerusalem’s prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design who had created public sculptures such as “Sea Ball” at Tel Aviv’s Gordon Beach and “The Fan” at Rabin Square, had dyed her hair blue in honor of the occasion, identifying herself as a human flag.

“I come from the world of visual arts, so I’m the medium and the message, no agenda,” said Tenne Czaczkes.

She was also going through a trying personal period.

“I felt like a broken flag, like a broken woman,” said Tenne Czaczkes. “I identified with these flags; they sounded an alarm for me.”

She picked up the flags from the ground and brought them home to wash, dry, and fold.

“I wasn’t sure what to do with them,” she said.

From then on, every time Tenne Czaczkes saw an abandoned flag on the street, she collected it, brought it home, and washed it — without a plan, but knowing she would somehow raise it again one day.

“Every time I was picking up a flag, I felt like I was raising myself,” said Tenne Czaczkes. “There was something very personal about it, something that no one else was seeing.”

A year later, Tenne Czaczkes took about 30 of the flags she had rescued and sewed them into one banner, thinking about the concepts of tikvah, or hope, and tkuma, or resurrection.

“It was 2019, and no one understood what I was doing, talking about tkuma,” said Tenne Czaczkes.

Those terms would be returned to the center of Israel’s vernacular after the bloody Hamas terror invasion of October 7, 2023, when Israelis were looking for hope and resurrection in the wake of the massacre.

But at that point, the flag was battered and bruised by Israeli society, pushed and pulled according to opinions and ideas, said Tenne Czaczkes.

Tenne Czaczkes put the flags aside, feeling that something was broken in Israeli pride.

She turned to a raft of volunteer efforts, attending funerals and paying condolence calls, helping out wherever she could.

At one point, a bereaved friend who had lost family members on October 7 asked Tenne Czaczkes to show her the flag banner she’d made. It was a moment when the artist realized that the project could represent something for others, not just for herself.

Eventually, Tenne Czaczkes began carrying the patchwork with her, using it to tell the story of the discarded flags and what they had come to represent.

She also began adding those cleaned, mended flags to her “Flag of Flags.”

“I told the story of ability and Israeli hope, and I celebrated it and I believed it,” said Tenne Czaczkes.

She now usually keeps “The Flag of Flags” folded up in a bundle that fits into her backpack — until it’s taken out for events and conversations.

“It’s huge and beautiful and so unusual in its impact,” said Tenne Czaczkes, who likens it to a mass of raindrops.

Tenne Czaczkes has brought “The Flag of Flags” to official ceremonies for bereaved families in the south, to hospitals and organizations, to schools and nursing homes, where sometimes hundreds of people hold it up together.

She has held it up with Nova survivors, hostage families, veterans, and bereaved families from Jewish, Bedouin, Druze and Muslim communities.

“When I picked up that first flag, it felt like the idea of picking it up was a hopeful step,” said Tenne Czaczkes. “It came from the lowest place, from under the wheels of cars, from dust into something new, with emotional value.”

A few months ago, Tenne Czaczkes began working with the Education Ministry to bring “The Flag of Flags” to schools.

She now works with schoolkids on similar projects, having them find flags and then wash and mend them with their parents and grandparents.

“It’s like factories for the flags, and they hold onto them, they really hold the flags,” she said.

Tenne Czaczkes has sewn much of her flag canopy together with gold thread, mimicking kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum to fill in the cracks.

“I don’t give up on any flag, it doesn’t matter what state it’s in,” she said.

As Israel gets closer to its 80th year, Tenne Czaczkes would like to expand the project, bringing “The Flag of Flags” to Jewish communities around the world, creating an online exhibit around the flag canopy, and possibly filming a documentary about how to share the flag.

“I want to tell how one person chooses to change their story through a small act and bring people to this reality,” said Tenne Czaczkes.