Donald Weber
Barricade
Goat Swamp (Ukr., Kozyne Boloto) is the original name of the area in central Kiev where Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, found itself at the current epicenter of global tensions in 2014. Unlike sheep, goats do what they will and command special attention in folklore for their pugnacious and fertile abandonment to freedom.
So it is with the creative accoutrements of these anonymous street fighters, their homemade uniforms, molotovs, trophies, and tire barricades — the smoking language of the Revolt’s siege apparatus.
Weber focuses on cataloging the expressive impulses behind the protesters’ stoic dissimilitude and the almost holy rapture of their public self-assertion. The final barricade lies in the political language of representation itself.
Ukraine’s absolute polarities of past and future, its utter blackness and transcendent light, are the deeper themes of this interpretation. Barricade is a high-risk collaboration with the hundreds of brave men and women whose unquenchable thirst for change fuels hope for a new generation.