My Contribution to frieze's "25 Best Works of the 21st Century"

Thomas Hirschhorn, Gramsci Monument, 2013, Forest Houses, Bronx, New York. Courtesy: Dia Art Foundation; photograph: Romain Lopez

#25

Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument was a vibrant, makeshift pavilion constructed on the grounds of the Forest Houses public housing development in the Bronx. Crafted from humble materials, the structure was emblazoned with slogans from Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, written in 1929–35 during his imprisonment by the Italian Fascist government. Built and animated by local residents, the Gramsci Monument hosted concerts, workshops and lectures on critical theory, inviting those often excluded from such discourse into spaces of thought and expression. While Hirschhorn orchestrated the project, the community led its realization; embodying a democratic form of cultural production, it avoided the pitfalls of other projects rooted in relational aesthetics by unfolding outside the museum. Evoking Gramsci’s emancipatory vision signalled a reaction to the ‘End of History’ cultural moment that Mark Fisher had identified in Capitalist Realism (2009), in the wake of the aftershocks of the War on Terror and Occupy. The work became a living reminder that political transformation demands cultural awakening – and that art can be its staging ground.

[Read my colleagues takes on the other 24 best works of the 21st Century at frieze.com]