Partially founded by Articule, art gallery, four flags were burnt by the artist and her friends using lighter fluid in an empty lot in Montréal: a Canadian, a Québec, an Argentina, and American and a white flag. The burning was filmed on video and put into slow motion. Un drapeau brûlant (a burning flag) was presented in two parts: several public projections and a gallery exhibition. For five nights the week before the 1995 Québec referendum on sovereignty, the artist set up a white bedsheet using an improvised wooden frame on Montréal streets, including Saint-Laurent, McGill College, and Hôtel de Ville. She projected the video of the burning flags down onto street-level from the windows of friends’ studios or apartments. She approached the organizers of a public space (an empty lot on a busy corner) in the plateau where the “Yes” camp had been holding events and got permission to project her video on a big screen that was already present on this particular site. For this projection, the night before the referendum, the artist stayed in the site and had conversations with about 20-30 interested art viewers and passers-by.

The next spring, Borello rented a gallery space in the Belgo Building (372 Ste Catherine ouest. Montréal) and exhibited the remnants of the burnt flags, as well as the video.

Having migrated from Argentina (right after the 1976 military coup), Mariela Borello was thrown into Québec’s independence debate at its height, when she came to Montréal to study at Concordia University. With memories of the decades of political upheaval in her native country still fresh in her mind, she felt frustrated and torn by ideas around nationalism that dominated in the public sphere. She remembers it as an emotional time; she saw the anglo community around her being anxious and worried about the outcome. She felt the need to make a provocative gesture that might create a different kind of dialogue, one that opened up the idea of identity. Is nation represented by a flag? Is the burning of flag a gesture of desecration?