Keywords :
Patrimoine colonial; Monuments; Colonial Legacy; Belgium; Colonial History; Visual Arts; Memory; Léopold II; Leopold II, King of Belgium; Public Space; Decolonial Turn; Black Lives Matter; Contemporary Art; Colonial Monuments; Décolonisation; Espace public; Statuary; Sculpture
Abstract :
[fr] Depuis une quinzaine d’années, en Belgique, de plus en plus de voix critiques s’élèvent contre les nombreux monuments et autres lieux de mémoire coloniaux érigés dans l’espace public. Face à ces questionnements – qui ont pris une ampleur considérable depuis les manifestations antiracistes Black Lives Matter de 2020 –, certains artistes ont tenté, eux aussi, de prendre part à ce mouvement « décolonial » en interrogeant et en détournant les vestiges patrimoniaux liés au colonialisme. À travers l’analyse de deux projets, celui de l’artiste ghanéen Ibrahim Mahama à Anvers en 2018 et celui de la plasticienne belgo-rwandaise Laura Nsengiyumva à Bruxelles la même année, cet article entend ainsi aborder la question de la décolonisation de l’espace public belge sous le prisme de la création artistique actuelle.
[en] In Belgium, there are a significant number of street names, statues and monuments bearing the imprint of Belgian colonisation, built in the effigy of colonial ‘heroes’ and once intended to serve a propagandist discourse. In an international socio-political context increasingly marked by the questioning of colonialism and Western imperialism, colonial references in the public space raise many questions and criticisms. Over the past fifteen years, this contested heritage has become a recurrent target of activist actions, sometimes taking the form of artistic interventions, with the aim of probing the historical representations of the colonial past in the country and the weight of this controversial legacy.
This article aims to analyse several art projects that attempted to question, divert and challenge the legitimacy of colonial symbols in the Belgian urban landscape. This was the case with the installation PeoPL (2018) by the Belgian-Rwandan artist Laura Nsengiyumva, an ice replica of the equestrian statue of Leopold II on the Place du Trône in Brussels, which refers to the omnipresence and heroisation of the royal figure in the Belgian capital. Another example concerns the project On Monumental Silences by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, created and presented in Antwerp in 2018, whose main objective was to propose a ‘counter-monument’ to the statue of Belgian missionary Constant De Deken located in Wilrijk, which has long been criticised for its racist and stereotypical iconography. These two initiatives are indicative of current practices that tend to produce alternative readings and new plastic languages in response to the presence of colonial monuments in public space and the predominant Eurocentric vision that emanates from them.
Special issue title :
Statuary, memory and representations in the decolonial era/statuaire, mémoires et représentations au tournant décolonial
