In Filiz Soyak's Breath Flags Installation, Wishes Could Come True
People sent their best wishes to the artist, who turned them into symbols that ripple out to humankind.
Photos courtesy of Filiz Soyak
A wish becomes a symbol becomes a flag becomes part of the universe. If we send our wishes out with the wind, maybe they’ll come true. That’s the idea behind Filiz Soyak’s Breath Flags, a collective and global art installation currently gracing the pedestrian walkway along the Hudson River Skywalk on both the Hudson and Catskill sides of the bridge.
Long before COVID came our way, the interdisciplinary Hudson-area artist focused on aligning her work with meditation and breath. “My work,” she writes, "is about finding peace, stillness, and an awareness of just being.” She had closed her shop in Hudson last fall, and after the shutdown, felt the need to create something positive and hopeful. Her Breath Mountain, currently on exhibit at Hudson Hall — her contribution to The Hudson Eye festival — is a series of pieces made with hundreds of cotton stitches and marks on burlap created in communion with the breath. (That exhibit will be on view through Nov. 1.)
But Soyak had also been yearning for a collaborative project. As fortuitous as a wish coming true, the Hudson Development Corporation started the Hudson Emergency Arts program, a grants project shepherded by writer and producer Seth Rogovoy, Linda Mussman of Time & Space Limited (TSL) and chroeographer and media artist Jonah Boaker. The idea was to inject some cash into the arts and support local artists.
Breath Flags along the Skywalk, Hudson side
More stars aligned: Aaron Levi Garvey, curator of The Hudson Eye, heard about the project, and had been talking to people at Olana and the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, who got the New York State Bridge Authority involved. In what seems like a miracle, the organizations that manage the Hudson River Skywalk had been looking for a public art installation to activate the new pedestrian walkway. Breath Flags was the first project approved for installation along the Skywalk.
“I didn’t think they’d approve it, but they did,” Soyak says.
If getting all the powers-that-be to sign on is complicated, the concept of Breath Flags is simple, elegant and inclusive. Soyak put out the word through her social media for people to submit their one-word wish. Her creative process has her sitting with each wish, thinking what the person wants to put out to the world, and coming up with a unique symbol that embodies that wish. She paints in communion with her breath onto the handmade flag. So far, there are 40 flags on display, but Soyak is hoping to add more.
The wishes are universal: Love. Hope. Oneness. Strength. Each flag has a tag with the first name of the person who submitted the wish, their age, their one-word wish and where they’re from. The flags get additional exposure with their own posts, including brief statements about the wish, on the artist’s Instagram feed and website.
“I’ve received wishes from all over the world and the United States” Soyak says. “This project allows the public to engage personally. It’s been a beautiful process of connecting with all these people and connecting all these people to each other.”
Though the project was initially scheduled to run through September, it looks like it will be extended into the late fall. Soyak is still taking wishes; her personal goal is to keep It going as long as she can. The issue, of course, is how to keep funding it. Some of the wish-ers have inquired about buying their flags, but at this point, Soyak wants to keep the installation intact. She’s working on prints of the flags for those who want to buy images of their flags. There’s been interest in doing the installation in Sweden and Portugal. For now, though, we’re lucky to be able contemplate the Breath Flags in a vista-filled walk from Catskill to Hudson, where the wind sends the wishes skyward.
If she made her own wish, it would be harmony, but Soyak has not made a flag for herself.
“My contribution is the act of bringing these wishes together and creating a visual symbol for each of them,” she says. “They are really positive wishes. They give me so much hope.”
Visit the flags during the Fourth Annual Skywalk Arts Festival this Sunday, Sept. 20 from noon to 4 p.m. The festival will follow social-distancing procedures, and will be all outdoors.
