Light the Barricades: Reflections from an Exhausted Age

This limited-edition book is the culmination of Light the Barricades, a participatory public installation that spanned four sites across Los Angeles. These electrified shrines served as spaces for contemplating the psychological barriers in our lives and garnered over 3,000 handwritten reflections from visitors.

This book 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.