The Politics of Stone

“We project ourselves mentally onto monuments. We like to imagine ourselves on pedestals.” The recipients of our projections can be anything, artist Krzysztof Wodiczko averred in a talk at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning—or, indeed, anyone. Since embarking on his eponymous series thirty years ago, Wodiczko has gingerly defaced stony personae from Lenin to Lincoln. He’s enlivened the facades of buildings such as Marcel Breuer’s erstwhile Whitney Museum and Gordon Bunshaft’s Hirshhorn Museum and superimposed temporary guises onto old or existing repositories of meaning. At times, his manner has been forthright and tendentious: in 1985, he overlaid a swastika onto the pediment of South Africa House in London. But there was also an element of pathos: for his 1998 intervention at Boston’s Bunker Hill Monument, Wodiczko drew on video interviews he did with those affected by gang violence. “The past cannot change, their trauma cannot change, but seeing monuments [come] alive helps them move on,” he said. At the very least, it could be a start.