Art & Exhibitions
At Taittinger, Amena Menia Commemorates Forgetting
THE DAILY PIC: The Algerian photographer records memorials that don't memorialize.
THE DAILY PIC (#1369): This photo, titled Garem, is (probably) of a memorial to those who fell in the Algerian war for independence. It was taken by the Algerian artist Amena Menia and is now in a group show at Richard Taittinger Gallery in New York.
What could be more poignant than a memorial that is so damaged that its subject can’t be made out, even when only 50 years have passed since the events it (probably) commemorates?
All monuments are fated to fade away; their hopes of keeping memory alive “forever” are doomed from the beginning. Almost any bronze guy on horseback proves that. But a monument that doesn’t even last as long as the people who remember its making? That seems a cruel trick of fate.
Or maybe such forgetting can act as a natural, almost geological resistance to the elites that put up monuments, and have the power to decide what’s worth remembering. (©Amina Menia, courtesy Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York)
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