Maidan - occupied spaces

2013-2014

Maidan – occupied spaces is collection of photographs depicting everyday life at the epicentre of a mass protest, focussing on the Euromaidan protest in Kiev, Ukraine.

News from Ukraine, including the passing of new laws aimed at crushing any form of protest or freedom of speech, is getting worse day by day.

In the cell of Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Andreasstraße, Erfurt, Germany, 2016

Euromaidan is a unified protest containing multiple, often contradictory beliefs: dreams of a just Europe, formed outside the EU’s borders; Far-Right, ultra-nationalist values; hatred of the current system of governance and naming of ‘enemies’; demands for radical, democratic transformation – all these meet in one protest space and try to coexist.

This photos show people spending night after night standing in protest on freezing streets, sleeping in occupied government buildings. In the darkness of this night, they can come under attack from riot police, and must stand shoulder to shoulder to defend the hard-won main square of the city from the State. Winter’s day is also spent on this square, or warming up in underpasses and cafes.

Scenes of highly unstable life in Ukraine today, transported into the sheltered European reality of an exhibition space in Berlin, remind us of the necessity of refreshing our definitions of our political goals. Fascism can grow fast in such situations.

But at the same time, in this case, the State is turning into a dictatorship.

This photographs talk about the existence and the blurring of borders, but also about solidarity, and its ability to overcome these borders.

Shows

Exhibition “Euromaidan – occupied spaces” accompanied with the series of discussions and events first took place at OKK Gallery in Berlin (31.1 – 29.02.2014)

All texts in the exhibition space were shown in the translation of Claudia Dathe. Additional video work by film-makers Patrick Evans and Hannes Ziegerhofer was showing variations in truths about the protest movement, as seen through the eyes of reporters and citizen journalists.

In May 2014 the exhibition was shown in the Literature Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia.

In June 2014 they were shown during the Amnesty International Meeting in Münster, Germany.

In 2016 the exhibition was shown at Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Andreasstraße in Erfurt.

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