Carolina Vanegas Carrasco: Memory Dynamics in Monuments and Counter-Monuments in Colombia

The current discussions around the 2009 intervention in the Central Cemetery of Bogota by Colombian artist, Beatriz González, Auras Anónimas, as well as Fragments, the work made by Colombian artist, Doris Salcedo, with the weapons left by the former guerrilla movement FARC/EP in 2018, are starting points to think about the definitions of monument and counter-monument and its dynamics in the contemporary Colombian context. These debates allow us to identify the current methodological ways to expand the understanding of these types of works as activators of collective memory. Focusing on the processes of creation as well of those of the dismantling, displacement or destruction of monuments and counter/monuments, let us analyze the debates of memories, the uses of the past and the possibilities of understanding these types of works as marks to think (denkmal).

Carolina Vanegas Carrasco lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She earned aPhD in History and Art History at Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales – Universidad Nacional de San Martín (IDAES-UNSAM) and Master in History of Argentine and Latin American Art at the same University, both under the supervision of Laura Malosetti Costa. Her master’s dissertation received the First Award for Cultural Patrimony Postgraduate Dissertation from the Ministry of Culture of Colombia and was published in 2012. She is the coordinator of the Study Group on Public Art in Latin America (GEAP – Latinoamérica, University of Buenos Aires) and Adjunct Professor and Researcher at the Research Institute of Cultural Patrimony (TAREA IIPC-UNSAM). Currently, the District Institute of Cultural Heritage of Bogotá is editing a  book based on her doctoral thesis titled: Monumental Disputes: Sculpture and Politics in the Centennial of Independence (Bogotá, 1910).