Honouring the dead: Ukrainian installation at Burning Man festival
At this year's Burning Man festival, the Ukrainian team will present an installation entitled The Hedgehog Temple. This work of art will be a memorial dedicated to their compatriots who have been killed in the full-scale war.
According to Yaroslav Korets, Chairman of the Community of Ukrainian Burners, the Ukrainian installation has been supported by funding from the organisers of the Burning Man Project.
Korets said the idea of the installation arose when the festival announced the theme for this year, ANIMALIA. The Ukrainian team decided to make a giant hedgehog built of anti-tank hedgehogs and covered with a military pixel pattern. Korets explained that through the installation, the authors wanted to show a symbol of defending Ukraine, as well as dedicating it to the deceased.
"The Hedgehog Temple War Memorial is dedicated to the Ukrainians who will never be able to go to Burning Man because the war took their lives... We are taking our pain and grief from human losses to Burning Man. We want to tell the stories of our friends from the creative community who were taken by the war. Artists, DJs, musicians, directors, artists, IT specialists, journalists... they could have been with us at Burning Man, but they will never be able to do that because of the Russian aggression," he added.
The hedgehog, made of rusty metal seven metres high, with a hundred anti-tank hedgehogs in its stomach, was completed in Kyiv in June. Then it was loaded into a container and shipped to the United States.
Next to the installation there will be anti-tank hedgehogs engraved with stories of the dead. Artist Oleksandrt Slobodyanyuk urged everyone to send memories of their family or relatives. "If you want photos, stories or personal belongings of your Heroes to be placed in our Temple and help save those who are defending us all… It could be an arm patch, a photo, glasses, a cap, a bracelet, any personal thing - anything that we can exhibit in our temple and through which we can reach people on the other side of the world," he wrote.
Burning Man is an annual independent art festival which has been held since 1986 in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA. A variety of art works are installed on site, and at the end of the festival, a giant human figure made of wood is burned.
Last year, the Lithuanian-American camp Amber Dust installed a five-metre trident at the festival to show their solidarity with Ukraine.
Burning Man 2023 will take place on 27 August – 4 September.
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