Agents of Inscription: Rewriting the Monumental Landscape at the Place des Montréalaises

Abstract

In a different constellation of urban struggles, women are the protagonists of a new form in the production of public space at the Place des Montréalaises (PDM). Combating the bronze ceiling, the PDM amends Montreal’s memory culture by “unforgetting” women in public representational space. This proposition argues for the representation of women via text-based art as the values represented via sculptural figurative elements have become obsolete. Serving as a case study, this proposition is being tested through a major piece of public urban design through the creation of a city park within a major Canadian city in front of its city hall. We are collectively witnessing the failures of a post-colonial heritage comprised of didactic and classical monuments in a contemporary world. Despite the eventual failures of the commemorative landscape, rooted in values and fixed in time, this does not preclude our collective instinct to memorialize. Rather it upholds a community’s endeavours to create a memorial landscape with the caveat that beliefs change with an acceptance that the relevancy of monuments will shift. I address two interwoven questions in this dissertation. The first examines the PDM in the orbit of social forces by re-evaluating monuments through an inclusive lens. As the PDM is being built, Montreal’s surrounding commemorative landscape is actively under reconsideration. Groups have focused their attention on three prominent statues owned by the Montreal public art program, resulting in two statues being toppled while the bronze statue of Queen Victoria on Sherbrook Street is under protective wrapping following a series of aesthetic actions: buckets of green paint were poured over the statue, followed by a second incident involving more-visible red paint. In this context, what role does the PDM have in building, maintaining, and contesting the city’s commemorative landscape? The second question examines the PDM as a case study in the deployment of art-based inscription as the aesthetic strategy of gender representation designed to work toward a more accurate reflection of Montreal’s evolution. Does art-based text have the power to reconfigure representations of gender through public memory production at the PDM?