The Counter-Monument and Colonial Hauntings
‘PeoPL’ by Laura Nsengiyumva 2018, Julien Truddaïu
Within the hallway of a secondary school in Brussels, in October 2018, the ice replica of the equestrian statue of the late King Leopold ii melted.[1] Accredited to the artistic genius of Laura Nsengiyumva, the anti-monument ‘PeoPL’ testifies to the need to dissolve colonial attitudes while offering a poignant criticism of traditional monument conventions.[2] Our memory of Belgium’s role in the colonial era, through this public commemorative artwork, is turned to the Congolese victims of the late King’s barbaric rule. It serves as a reminder of the existence of colonial ties and calls for a self-reflexive approach to memorialising historic trauma. Boyer and Wertsch, note that ‘nations and cultures are struggling to heal from, memorialise, adjudicate or at least understand and explain traumatic pasts’.[3] Arguably, ‘PeoPL’ offers an alternative aid to this struggle. But firstly, who was King Leopold ii and what is his legacy?
On his High Horse
King Leopold II was Belgium’s second king, his reign spanning 49 years, from 1865-1809 only ending with his death.[4] During this time, he was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.[5] A symbol of European colonialism, the ‘Free State’ was a key example of atrocities wrought by oppressors who demanded the forced labour of native communities in these colonised countries. The inhumane methods of oppression used by Leopold’s ‘Force Publique’ on the Congolese people returned for him vast personal wealth in the form of rubber and ivory – natural resources of the state. So inhumane, was the brutality in Congo, that it has become somewhat infamous; estimates vary among historians, but Edmund D Morel counts in his 1904 exposé, 20 million souls were lost.[6] Despite this sinister history, his legacy as an honourable monarch seems to be largely uncontested among the people of Belgium and some even lay flowers at the feet of his monuments in homage.[7]
Shifting Sensibilities
Considering the historical atrocities which occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Brussel’s streets still contain 70 colonial monuments and their existence surprisingly remained unchallenged until recent renewed global focus on racism.[8]
Aleida Assmann discusses how monuments remain invisible within a cities’ urban landscape until they spark controversy.[9] According to Assman, ‘renewed visibility’ of a monument can occur as a result of change in political circumstances or change in public and aesthetic sensibility.[10] A shift in public sensibility surrounding colonialism and race caused monuments of King Leopold ii to become symbols of white and colonial power structures, associated with racism instead of just national strength. In their article on ‘PeoPL’, Kopano Maroga articulates this change in the message of colonial monuments and hence the subjectivity of Belgiam’s colonial legacy.[11] Where some may view a commemoration of development and the strength of an empire, others are reminded of ‘a history of oppression, expropriation and trauma’.[12] This is where ‘PeoPL’ comes in. The ice replica takes the original monument, laced with coloniality and imperialism, and makes visible the previously unconscious dark history of the King’s legacy.
Dissolving Colonial Attitudes
‘PeoPL’, Laura Nsengiyumva, 2018, Daan Broos
The counter-monument is a form of monument which was born out of the shift from heroic and nationalist forms to self-reflexive and self-critical.[13] As explored by James Young, by flouting expectations of monument conventions, counter-monuments themselves are a critique of traditional memorials.[14]
Attending to the features of ‘PeoPL’, perhaps the most striking is its material composition. Sculpted out of ice, the late King mounted upon his horse gradually and almost invisibly melted. His gradual disappearance throughout the day of the exhibition is indicative of the disappearance of the presence of Leopold’s rule and a dissolving of the brutal colonial power structures he is inherently connected to.[15] As noted by Assmann, the impermanency of such counter-monuments represent a criticism of the aspiration for permanence in traditional monuments.[16] She goes on to reflect upon how traditional monuments, with their structural integrity of marble or brass, are aiming to achieve what is against human nature; a permanency of collective memory whereby a specific narrative remains untouched.[17] ‘PeoPL’s’ impermanency, therefore, serves as a critique of this illusion of a singular narrative of colonial memory being set in stone. The counter-monument challenges the ‘hegemonic reading of history’ which the original equestrian monument represents.[18]
The fluctuating state of ‘PeoPL’ and its eventual disappearance leaves ‘internalized images of the memorial’ in the place of the monument, as Young articulated when discussing the Hamburg Germany Monument against Fascism (1986).[19] Arguably, the memory of the absent monument is more evoking than those memories elicited from a material static one. Young marks that ‘once we assign a monumental form to memory, we have to some degree divested ourselves of the obligation to remember’.[20] Through its transient state, Nsengiyumva’s sculpture, therefore, hands this obligation of remembrance back to the spectator, since the monument itself will not assume the burden of memory for the community.[21] This obligation to actively remember dark colonial histories is placed upon the shoulders of the population of Belgium.
The counter-monument was positioned the hallway of a secondary school in Marolles neighbourhood of Brussels,[22] a public space associated with youth and knowledge as opposed to a space of authority and national power (as many traditional monuments are). Away from spaces of national pride, the monument allows for reflection outside of the lens of Belgian imperialist history. The monument invites sensory engagement with the rhythmic sound of the water dripping and the haunting illumination of the sculpture from the upturned pedestal. The encouragement of close interaction with the monument echoes the aritist’s call for participation of the community to reflect upon colonial atrocities and the continued existence of coloniality today.[23] The close interaction with the monument continued after the sculpture was entirely melted. Children playing with the melted remains of the ice replica on the night of the exhibition, in the eyes of Kapano Maroga, were a ‘vision of the future’.[24] They could represent a future in which the violence and trauma of colonialism so is far removed that the colonial legacy could be to them a ‘playground’.[25]
“‘The issue for us to sort out is what humanity ought to remember rather than what is good for humanity to remember’.”
Margalit summarises our obligation to remember and therefore the role of colonial monuments.[26] What some people consider good for Belgium to remember is Leopold’s legacy as the ‘builder king’; a monarch associated with prosperity, architectural development and heroic status.[27] However, what we ought to remember is the historic trauma of colonialism in the Congo, as marked by Maroga, ‘We cannot speak of what was built without speaking of what it was built upon.’[28]
‘PeoPL’ proclaims just that – what we ought to remember as opposed to what is good to remember.
[1] Joachim Ben Yakoub, ‘PeoPL’s Bursting Light, Melting Down the Afterlives of a Monstrous Colonial Monument’, Third Text, Volume 35. Issue 4 (2021), p. 413-516 (p. 414).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Pascal Boyer, and James V. Wertsch, Memory in Mind and Culture, (Cambridge University Press, 2009), ProQuest Ebook Central, p.248 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bristol/detail.action?docID=442858> [05.03.2023].
[4] Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 111–112.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Edmund Dene Morel, King Leopold’s Rule in Africa, (London: William Heinemann, 1970) https://archive.org/details/kingleopoldsrul01moregoog/page/n3/mode/1up?ref=ol&view=theater [06.03.23].
[7] Kopano Maroga, PeoPL: Colonial Haunting and Decolonial Dreams, (1st December 2018) < Rekto:Verso | PeoPL: Colonial Haunting and Decolonial Dreams (rektoverso.be)> [06.03.2023].
[8] Jennifer Rankin, ‘Belgium forced to reckon with Léopold's legacy and its colonial past’, The Guardian, 12 June 2020 <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/12/belgium-forced-to-reckon-with-leopolds-legacy-and-its-colonial-past#top> [06.03.23].
[9] Aleida Assmann, Contested Urban Spaces, Monuments, Traces and Decentered Memories, (Camden: Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2022), p. 23. <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87505-3> [05.03.2023].
[10] Ibid., p. 25.
[11] Maroga, PeoPL: Colonial Haunting and Decolonial Dreams.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Assmann, Contested Urban Spaces, Monuments, Traces and Decentered Memories, p.27.
[14] James E Young, ‘The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,’ Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 2, (1992), 267–96.
[15] Yakoub, ‘PeoPL’s Bursting Light, Melting Down the Afterlives of a Monstrous Colonial Monument’, (p.414).
[16] Assmann, Contested Urban Spaces, Monuments, Traces and Decentered Memories, p.24.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Yakoub, ‘PeoPL’s Bursting Light, Melting Down the Afterlives of a Monstrous Colonial Monument’, (p.419).
[19] James E Young, ‘The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,’ Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, no. 2, (1992), pp. 267-296 (p. 278).
[20] Young, ‘The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,’ (p. 273).
[21] Ibid.
[22] Yakoub, ‘PeoPL’s Bursting Light, Melting Down the Afterlives of a Monstrous Colonial Monument’, (p.414).
[23] Ibid., p. 419.
[24] Maroga, PeoPL: Colonial Haunting and Decolonial Dreams.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Avishai Margalit, Ethics of Memory, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 83– 84. (2004).
[27] Rankin, ‘Belgium forced to reckon with Léopold's legacy and its colonial past’. The Guardian.
[28] Maroga, PeoPL: Colonial Haunting and Decolonial Dreams.
