POSTPONED Lecture | Monuments, Sexuality, and Contested Spaces

How can public spaces be memorialised through art, and what critical role may sexuality play in this to promote (more) inclusive spaces?

At the heart of this lecture lies a concern with the effacing of sexual minority groups. Drawing from insights gained in the multi-site AHRC-funded research project Queer Memorials with case studies based in the USA, the Netherlands and Poland, the focus of this talk is on a salient case of failure: Tęcza, Polish for ‘rainbow’.

Unveiled in Warsaw’s city centre in 2012, this 26m-wide, rainbow-coloured arch by the artist Julita Wójcik was introduced as a symbol of joy, peace and connection. However, the artwork’s largely perceived LGBT+ symbolism met heated opposition from an amalgamation of ethno-nationalist, far-right, and religiously conservative parties.*

The hostility against ‘Tęcza’, or a deemed ‘importation’ of Western LGBT+ rights and values, was accompanied by repeated arson attacks, leading to its destruction and removal in 2015. The social reproduction of Tęcza, spanning immaterial, imagined and digital ‘afterlives’, notably mediated through social media platforms, not only presents a ‘more-than-urban’ reality and post-material narrative after the work’s physical destruction.

The debate about Tęcza continues to mark the increasingly precarious position of LGBT+ people within a growingly conservative national climate. This talk tracks the erratic journey of public engagement with Tęcza and discusses how the politics over (anti-)LGBT+ memorialisation turned this public artwork into a dissonant, or ‘que(e)rying’, monument.