Decolonial Art Practices and the Contestation of Monuments in Public Space

What is it about?

We start from artistic and artivist interventions on colonial monuments in public spaces that continue to shape how societies remember the past and whose histories become visible. These “Southern” artistic approaches question who is represented in monuments, who is excluded, and how such visual hierarchies are challenged and renegotiated. From the perspective of art and visual studies, the chapter reflects on the connections between memory, aesthetics, and space, and on how public spaces can be rethought and decolonized. We argue that artistic interventions around colonial monuments have the power to “topple” them artistically and intellectually. Rather than erasing history, such interventions keep dominant historical narratives open to ongoing discussion and critique. Artistic interventions are therefore understood as a continuous process rather than a one-time act, and as practices that can reshape social communities, public culture, and aesthetic forms over time.

Featured Image

Photo by Sasha Matveeva on Unsplash

Photo by Sasha Matveeva on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We find it important to focus on the arts’ potential to shape communities and collective memories, especially in times of difficult and ‚contested‘ debates about cultural hegemonies, multiple publics, and the right to collective remembrance. In such contexts, we argue that it is essential to embrace complexity and processual change as productive challenges and to recognize the role of the arts within these debates. We also stress the need to historicize these discussions. By engaging with trauma theory from a postcolonial perspective, the chapter situates current, often heated debates within longer historical frameworks, allowing for a more critical and reflective understanding of the present.

Perspectives