colour anthem
Bakhmut - Ukraine, 2019
Collage; Photography
On the 4th of February 2016 the Ukrainian parliament voted for renaming Artemivsk, name chosen to honour Stalin’s friend Fjodor Sergejev nicknamed Artjom to the former one Bakhmut.
The decision came along with the formal decommunisation process started in 2015 following the Maidan Revolution and the Russian annexation of Crimea and Donbass region.
Cities and public spaces named after communist-related themes have been rewritten, monuments dedicated to Lenin and other communist personalities have been removed.
A new era, cleansed on one side from the corruption of the previous president and political establishment and on the other side from the soviet, Russia-related symbology, had began. With the reaffirmation of the national Ukrainian jurisdiction over the Russian occupation, in the freed areas of Donbass Oblast’ the statement of a national identity took the public form of turning the most various objects to be found in the public space into carrier of Ukrainian flag colours.
A statement of national identity that resonates in each and every corner of the liberated territory.
