Within the Fabric of Public Space

Textile Interventions in Current Processes of Decolonizing Monuments

Abstract

The debate on decolonizing monuments has provoked a great deal of covering and shrouding of public sculptures. This paper looks at three examples and shows how textile interventions alter a monument’s visibility and, as products of (post)colonial trade or communal handicraft, add semantic layers. Ranging from The Kudzu Project’s marking of Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, VA, through the covering of the Robert Milligan statue by protesters in London, to a curated artwork by Joiri Minaya in Hamburg, the examples span both geographical regions and the recent history of the debate. The paper proposes that textile ephemerality questions concepts of history embedded in the traditional materiality of public sculptures and provides a model for imagining other practices of commemoration.