In "Roots of Resilience," sixteen artists were selected from a call for applications to design flags that tell stories of hope, strength, and community, honoring the journeys of those who made Philly their home. From textiles to digital art, these powerful flags will fly at Spruce Street Harbor Park from May 22, 2026, to September 7, 2026.
About the Flag:
This pennant flag draws on a body of work that engages with the history of Philadelphia’s professional Jewish basketball team and the social dances they held after games between 1932 and 1949. The design layers a fragile field of pale paper from a facsimile of the team’s jersey with an archival image of the team bowing in a huddle, anchored by a ticket on the wide edge. Through these elements, the pennant links past and present, extending Gerson’s interest in how sites accumulate myth and how the body measures what no longer stands.
About the Artist:
Rudy Gerson (b. 1993, New York City; raised in Las Vegas, NV) is an artist and educator working across print, still and moving image, performance, and collaboration in a practice that explores the nature of group identity and social memory. Through subjects such as sports, nationalism, and dance, the works consider how collective desires are articulated in these contexts, reckoning with the contradictions of contemporary life, particularly where pleasure and violence are entangled.
