Monument

Obscuring Monuments i - iii

My concern with monuments is part of an ongoing and urgent study into forms of authoritative narratives or discourses that solidify into forms of nationalism, myth making, monument building and infrastructures.

Obscuring Monuments I-III picks up on and questions the monument as a form of public sculpture specifically or meaning more broadly. They intervene into areas of practice and research by deploying site specific performance, photography and video. All of the components are examples of my ongoing concern for a form of knowledge production and critique that engages theoretically as well as in practice in order to intervene within an urgent set of spatial, historical and contemporary issues.

In different ways each work in the series seeks to propose alternative readings of contemporary or historical implications, in order to tease or provoke critiques that question conventional or settled readings. They put into conversation tactics of play, performance and at times staging in ways that are critically motivated to rethink the way in which art processes can be deployed in relation to political contingency as well thinking about visual or performative practice as a form ‘critical theory’.

The the work cycles across space, from Reunion island to Johannesburg, and then back to Reunion, is an important feature that draws parallels across multiple sites as much as it articulates specificity. Working across spaces and times is here an important feature as it sets into motion parallels and discontinuities that are intended to open up the solidification and perhaps polemic nature of interventions into such an area.

WEBSITES

Oublie a Nouveau Fall With Palms Monument for the Fallen