Dave from Digital Eskimo forwarded an email today with these images attached, and a note explaining that a Norwegian diplomat had presented these at a UN presentation – but no reference link. Click on the flags to see the detail.

I ended up on a bit of a Google session and discovered that BrazilianArtists.net had details on the origin of the work.

Quote from Icaro Doria on ‘Meet the World’ campaign: “We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO.

The campaign has been running in Portugal since January 2005. There are eight flags that portray very current topics like the division of opinions about the war in Iraq in the United States, the violence against women in Africa, the social inequality in Brazil, the drug trafficking in Columbia, Aids and malaria in Angola, etc.

With regards to the email presenting the campaign as being done by a Norwegian diplomat, this information is completely wrong. There is no Norwegian diplomat called Charung Gollar, there was no presentation in the UNO, and the campaign is not called ‘The Power of the Stars’. This was all invented and is going round the world via email.”

For a moment I thought the Norwegians had someone special on their diplomatic team, alas no, its the artists that find clear and simple ways to express whats happening in these countries. Massive shout to Icaro Doria, Luis Silva Dias, João Roque, Andrea Vallenti and João Roque of the ‘Meet the World’ flags campaign, its amazing what brilliant creative can do to create awareness and word of mouth.