Moving Through Space

Spaces in urban geography are rich with symbols and signs related to national as well as personal narratives. Artists who construct public art installations in sites symbolizing hegemonic power and cultural identities are able to rework or reclaim the meanings attached to these spaces.

I am interested in artists who engage in performative, site-specific installations that aim to recreate historical or contemporary political events in a symbolic way. I will argue that by reframing the meaning of significant sites using artistic devices of affect and temporality, installation artists are in a unique position to critically analyse political and social questions which ‘trouble’ our society.

I will examine two case studies. The first is Gregor Schneider’s 2007 work, 21 Beach Cells. This installation involved a series of interactive metal prison cages, symbolizing Guantanamo Bay. The installation was placed on Bondi Beach in Sydney. At the time, the Australian Government supported the US government’s actions of indefinitely detaining so-called enemy non-combatants. Bondi Beach symbolizes the free and egalitarian spirit of Australian national identity – a jarring vision with the landscape of the Guantanamo prison.  The second work is Doris Salcedo's 2007 work, 6 y 7 Novembre. Salcedo installed a sculpture over the Palais of Justice building in Colombia’s capital city, Bogotá. The work remembered the events of 6 to 7 November 1985 when militia stormed that very building – the High Court of Colombia.

Salcedo and Schneider reclaim these meaningful sites to create affect between artist and viewer, between citizen and nation. The implicit value of these locations facilitates a conversational or reflexive relationship with the viewer where the past is effectively brought into the present. This dialogical relationship makes the viewer complicit in both the artwork and the subject matter it addresses. Therein lies the transformative power of the artwork.