Jazmina Cininas | The New World navigates between the flags of the Old World (2018). Artist flag book with collage from vintage Estonian encyclopaedias. | Courtesy the artist and Australian Galleries, Melbourne.

This unconventional binding structure is known as a flag book. The content itself is comprised of flags as well as motifs from coats of arms. Every flag has been modified through the addition of a motif from another flag while the coats of arms have been reconfigured into new forms and alliances. The work challenges the notion of inviolable national symbols and cultural identities, instead acknowledging that every nation and culture has evolved over time from multiple generations of migrations and hybrid cultural influences. The vintage collage material was sourced from redundant Estonian encyclopaedias during an artist residency at the Estonian Printing and Paper Museum, Tartu, in 2017. At the time of making, I thought it fitting that a number of the flags themselves were now redundant following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, although now they take on a more menacing spectre.