LECTURE: TERNE THORSEN: CHALLENGING MONUMENTS: PROTEST, VANDALISM AND EVERYDAY ICONOCLASM

About the lecture

More information will be available here when we get nearer to the event.

About the lecture series

Monumental sculpture has taken central stage in contemporary discussions on colonial history, structural racism, inequality, and marginalization. Recently public statues of Danish kings, missionaries, and explorers have been confronted by activists seeking to address unfinished histories of Danish colonialism. Statues of Hans Egede in Nuuk and Copenhagen have been daubed in red paint with “DECOLONIZE!” and “RACIST!” added to their plinths, and a plaster bust of King Frederik V has been thrown into the waters of the Copenhagen harbor. Artists have also erected new critical public monuments, such as Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle’s I Am Queen Mary (2018) – the first statue of a Black woman in Denmark, and the first monument to commemorate histories of resistance against Danish colonial rule.

Moving Monuments seeks to problematize the assumption that public monuments are static entities made for eternity. In contrast, the project focuses on the material, historical, and political transformations and reframings involved as monumental sculptures move between different sites and across time. The core-team members each work on individual projects, which will be presented within the frames of this lecture series, shifting the theoretical and methodological orientation of research on monumental sculpture in Denmark and beyond. In doing so, the project creates new critical platforms for discussing the life and afterlife of public monuments as dynamic historical agents whose functions and contexts change across time and space, the project examines the intersections of art, power, and imperial history.