Since we last spoke about monuments

Date: 14 September - 9 November 2008
Location: Hogewal 1-9
Opening: Saturday 13 September, 5 pm
with introductory talk: Azra Aksamija, Mihnea Mircan, Tom Nicholson, Gon Zifroni / Metahaven 4 pm

Azra Aksamija (AT), Matthew Buckingham (US), Sam Durant (US), Office KGDVS (B), Hans van Houwelingen (NL), Irwin (SLO), Alon Levin (NL), Metahaven (NL), Ciprian Muresan (RO), Tom Nicholson (AU), Jonas Staal & Vincent van Gerven Oei (NL), Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor (RO).
Curator: Mihnea Mircan (RO).

They are revered and vandalized, communitarian emblems or collective Freudian slips, instruments for populism or weapons for political protest, deliberate distortions of history or elaborate demonstrations of our forgetfulness. The exhibition ‘Since we last spoke about monuments' engages the construction, destruction or reconstruction of monuments as ways of making sense of our recent past and ideological unrest. It exposes the monumental to complicated histories and lingering conflicts, to imagination and dissent. It asks, obliquely, whether the metaphors of political imbalance most cities display in their central squares could be replaced by nonuments (Gordon Matta-Clark) that stem from new forms of communality and marginality.

Download here the exhibition texts written by Mihnea Mircan and some of the artists (pdf file)

Guided tours by Mihnea Mircan
Sundays 14, 21 september and 5 October, 3 pm
Saturday 8 November at 12 noon

Sam Durant: 'Is destruction creative? A discussion of the Defaced Monuments project'.
Wednesday 1 October, 8 pm

Mihnea Mircan (RO) curated the exhibition ‘Sublime Objects' and the 'Under Destruction' series of interventions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, Romania. He was the curator of 'Low-Budget Monuments', the Romanian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007). He contributes regularly to international publications. Thru December 2008 he is curator-in-residence at Kosmopolis Den Haag.

The exhibition ‘Since we last spoke about monuments' is part of the theme program ‘nu monument', which investigates the (im)possibility of a contemporary monument, as well as the position of art in this matter. Can art really give meaning to ‘publicity' in a fluid and fragmented society?

Acknowledgement: Mondriaan Stichting, Amerikaanse Ambassade Den Haag. Partner: Kosmopolis Den Haag