‘Project 1990’ as an Anti-Monument in Bucharest and the Aestheticisation of Memory

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses ‘Project 1990’ (2010–2014) as an example of ‘art of memorialisation’. The project included twenty temporary artistic interventions on the empty pedestal of the former statue of Lenin in Bucharest. The author compares this example of art of memorialisation to other memory strategies found in the Romanian public space after 1990. Building on James Young’s concept of anti-monument, ‘Project 1990’ questioned the ways in which communism is remembered in Romania, and how the transition to democracy, in the opinion of many of the exhibiting artists, failed. This curatorial project is a good example of the aestheticisation of memory—that is the anti-nostalgic and ironic treatment of symbols of the past, among which Lenin himself.