Light the Barricades: Reflections From an Exhausted Age

Light the Barricades is an interactive public art installation that reimagines the wall as a site for contemplating our inner obstructions. Shining a light on the difficult emotions which thwart our progress, this project is inspired by the ancient I Ching, a philosophical system of diagrams first carved into the wall of a prison cell 3,000 years ago.

By reconfiguring the experience of contemplative Chinese landscape scrolls, luminaries, and private devotional images, Light the Barricades provides a modern ritual for distracting times and offers an engaging opportunity to contemplate walls both physically and emotionally as part of the WALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine at Annenberg Space for Photography, currently on display at The Mint Museum of Art.

This limited-edition signed book is the culmination of Light the Barricades. It collects hundreds of these responses, ranging from personal reflections to broader political, spiritual, and psychosocial statements that create a contemporary American portrait. It also includes the fables that appeared on the installations, an introduction to the I Ching, meditations on emotional barriers, and the artists’ notes on the process and the role of ritual in public life. Each book is signed by the artists and comes with a one-of-a-kind Chinese ink study by Candy Chang that developed into the artwork for the installation.

386 pages. 342 illustrations. 8.75 x 5.75 x 1.5 inches. Pearl linen cloth hardcover. 100 lb satin interior. Numbered edition of 250. Signed by the artists. Ink study: 7.5 x 5.5 inches, ink on watercolor paper, signed by the artist.