Monumental cares rethinks monument debates, site specificity and art
activism in light of problems that strike us as monumental or
overwhelming, such as war, migration and the climate crisis. The book
shows how artists address these issues, from Chicago and Berlin to Oslo,
Bucharest and Hong Kong, in media ranging from marble and glass to
postcards, graffiti and re-enactment. A multidirectional theory of site
does justice to specific places but also to how far-away audiences see
them. What emerges is a new ethics of care in public art, combined with
a passionate engagement with reality harking back to the realist
aesthetics of the nineteenth century. Familiar questions can be answered
anew: what to do with monuments, particularly when they are the products
of terror and require removal, modification or recontextualisation? And
can art address the monumental concerns of our present?