Gramsci Monument

Artist: Thomas Hirschhorn
Location: New York, U.S.A
Year of completion: 2013
Researcher: Leon Tan

Gramsci Monument (2013) is the fourth and last project in the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s Monuments series.The monument consisted of a series of outdoor pavilions, including an exhibition of photographs from Fondazione Instituto Gramsci, a library of books by and about Gramsci, an Internet space, a lounge and a bar, all built and largely run by local residents. Gramsci Monument also comprised a public program of lectures and activities, from art workshops, to philosophy and poetry lectures, to open-mic sessions and a play called Gramsci Theatre. A website was created for the project, providing documentary materials from the public program as well as notes on the artwork.

Gramsci Monument had a makeshift appearance; we might call this a DIY aesthetics. As a definition, it suggests that a monument might be better conceived as an memory-making process, an activation of the community through engagement with Gramsci’s living thought, rather than as a mindless recycling of the major representations of a thinker’s life. It critiques the traditional monument as a cultural artifact intended to intimidate audiences into blind acceptance of a victor’s narrative; in a way, it equates the traditional monument with the cultural hegemony that occupied a great portion of Gramsci’s thought and life.