Thomas Hirschhorn and the Anti-Monument. A Critical Reframing

Abstract

This paper examines Thomas Hirschhorn’s artistic practice as an anti-monumental device that radically challenges the conventions of traditional monumentality. Through a comparative analysis of Gramsci Monument (2013) and Model for a Monument (2024), the essay highlights how the Swiss artist dismantles the celebratory, static, and vertical structure of classical monuments, replacing it with precarious, temporary, and participatory forms capable of activating new collective imaginaries. Hirschhorn critically engages with the rhetoric of “eternity” and “universality” embedded in modern monumentalism, proposing instead a new memorial grammar rooted in accessibility, co-production, and interaction. In dialogue with relational aesthetics and new genre public art, his projects reconfigure the roles of artist, curator, and audience, turning urban space into a field of social and political action. Yet what thresholds of inclusion and agency are truly achievable within artistic participatory processes? And to what extent does community engagement redefine authorship and the function of the monument itself? The analysis shows how Hirschhorn’s anti-monuments serve as methodological laboratories for rethinking commemorative practices in the contemporary era.