What are Monuments for?

As part of The Monument and the Changing City symposium, organised by In Certain Places in 2011, Turner Prize winning artist & curator Lubaina Himid made a presentation called ‘What are Monuments for? Possible Landmarks on the Urban Map : London and Paris’.

Click the video link below to watch the full 30 min talk on the In Certain Places website…

In her presentation, Himid asks questions we can use to think about what monumnets in our city are for, who they speak to, what they represent and what goes unrepresented.

She also uses collage and rich descriptions of an alternative London and an alternative Paris where the lives, histories and important figures in the Black diaspora are given as much focus as their white European counterparts are.

When we are thinking about the momuments in our own city, we need to ask these questions too – how does Plymouth’s urban space hide or reveal its diverse and globaly interlinked history? And how to we ensure that the monuments we build today speak to all of the city’s population?