Pink USA flag (2021)

Digital Artwork
Leon Lester

This artwork is designed to highly the global aberration that none of the world’s nations flags currently use the colour pink despite is being shown that it has a calming effect on the human psyche. For years, researchers have investigated the powerful effects colour can have on us. Colour psychology suggests that different colours can have an impact on our moods, feelings, and even behaviours. The colour pink, for example, is thought to be a calming colour associated with love, kindness, and femininity. In 1979, Psychologist Alexander Schauss found that when inmates of a prison looked at a flamingo pink card, their heart rate, pulse and respiration were reduced. According to Schauss himself, “The phenomenon affects the endocrine system, causing a calming effect on the muscle system,” he wrote in his study. “The effect can not be controlled by conscious or unconscious effort.” Schauss named the colour Baker-Miller pink after the directors of the institute where he again successfully showed it had the same mollifying effect on other angry prisoners held in a completely pink coloured detention cell. It also came to be known as drunk tank pink or Schauss pink – and, to this day, pink is used to pacify prisoners or assist healing in hospitals and psychiatry wards. Sports teams sometimes paint the opposing team’s locker room pink to keep the players passive and less energetic. Since the colour is so strongly associated with femininity, people sometimes associate Pink with qualities that are often thought of as feminine, such as softness, kindness, nurturance, and compassion. This artwork is thus designed to highlight the fact that the world’s nation states are largely manifesting and representative of masculine energy, as indicated by the choice of colours used in their flags which tend towards masculine colours that are more aggressive, paternal and warring like red, yellow and blue. There is a total absence of the use of Pink across all world flags indicative of the lack of feminine energy on the planet.