The largest Red Army memorial in the world stands 12 metres high at the centre of a popular city park. It includes Soviet flags carved in red granite, sixteen sarcophagi representing each of the Soviet Republics, and a quotation from Stalin declaring that ‘all now recognise that the Soviet… Read More
The zoo Tierpark Hagenbeck in Hamburg, Germany, was founded in 1907 by Carl Hagenbeck, a trader of wild animals who was notable for his exhibitions of people of colour in Völkerschauen or ‘human zoos’. Since 2020, petitioners and protestors have been demanding a critical reexamination of Hagenbeck’s legacy, calling… Read More
The Marine Denkmal (Marine Memorial) in Swakopmund, Namibia, commemorates the German imperial soldiers who fought against Indigenous Namibians in the Herero Wars (1904-1908). Amid fraught Namibian-Germany relations and contested national memory politics, this monument has become a reminder of unresolved colonial legacies and traumas. Indigenous Namibian groups have pursued… Read More
The small Italian town of Predappio has developed a controversial reputation as a site of neo-fascist ‘pilgrimage’ by virtue of its historical affiliation with the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. The town retains the peculiar distinction as both the birthplace of Mussolini and the location where he was eventually interred… Read More
In 2018, artists La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers created the ‘I Am Queen Mary’ Statue. The monument honours Mary Thomas, one of the three female leaders of the 1878 ‘Fireburn’ Rebellion, a revolt against Danish colonial rule on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. The monument was unveiled… Read More
There is no monument more contested in Lima than El Ojo que Llora (The Eye That Cries). Almost from the beginning it has been opposed and vandalized. A few years ago, the serenity and beauty of the area, in one of the main parks in the city, was compromised… Read More
The 2016 statue commemorating Mary Seacole at St. Thomas Hospital in London is the first statue in the United Kingdom dedicated to a named black woman. Mary Seacole is remembered for her involvement as a nurse in the Crimean War. However, some argue that her figure has been mythologised… Read More
During World War II, the U.S. Government incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans in so-called War Relocation Centres around the country. One of them was the Manzanar Relocation Center, which at its peak, housed around 11,000 detainees. Incarcerated behind barbed wire and guard towers, Japanese American families lost their freedom… Read More
Christopher Columbus was a famed Genoese explorer whose 1492 expedition across the Atlantic is famous for his ‘discovery’ of America. Having visited Galway in 1477, a monument commemorating this visit was unveiled in 1992, having been donated by the city of Genoa to mark the 500th anniversary of Columbus’… Read More
A life-sized bronze statue of Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (b. 1889-1970) currently stands in the courtyard of the National Library in Maputo, Mozambique. Its move to this location in 2002 is part of an eventful prior itinerary, charted below by drawing on various sources while acknowledging the… Read More
In 2018, a statue of Gandhi was proposed to be built in Blantyre, Malawi’s second-largest city. The Statue formed part of a USD 10 million investment from the Indian Government to construct a convention centre named after Gandhi. However, given Gandhi’s controversial writings on race, a ‘Gandhi Must Fall’… Read More
The Columbus Monument in Barcelona, located at the intersection of the city’s port and the main street of Las Ramblas, was built during the Columbus-mania of the 19th century and was the largest monument dedicated to the so-called discoverer of the Americas. Several social and political groups have called… Read More