As America marks its 250th birthday, Nguyen Wahed presents We Had Been Citizens of No Country, featuring works by john gerrard and Anna Barlik, both of whom take the national flag as their primary source material. Working from opposite ends of the material spectrum, one dissolves the flag into code and smoke, the other presses it into steel, tulle, and cloth. john gerrard projects existing nations into a bleak and unequal future; Barlik suggests nations that never existed. The question asked at the boundary of dystopia and utopia is whether belonging is derived from borders and history, or from the values, culture, and experience we actually share.