Reflections on MONUMENTS at MOCA

Reflections on MONUMENTS

I recently visited MONUMENTS at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA by invitation of Catherine Futter, senior curator of Decorative Arts at The Brooklyn Museum. Monuments: Co-organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and The Brick, the exhibition presents decommissioned Confederate monuments alongside contemporary artworks, examining how public monuments shape national identity, historical memory, and the unfinished legacy of post-Civil War America.

What struck me most was how clearly the exhibition revealed that monuments are never neutral. They are vessels of ideology, constructed to preserve power, shape memory, and influence collective consciousness. Through sculpture, photography, and installation, MONUMENTS exposes how art has historically been used both to uphold systems of oppression and to challenge them.

Seeing the photographic works of Andres Serrano (which I had first seen in the 90’s) and Nona Faustine within this context was especially powerful. Their works brought the human dimension of history into sharp focus, confronting race, memory, and identity in ways that felt immediate and deeply relevant.

What stayed with me after leaving was the realization that the struggle between truth and illusion, freedom and control, is not behind us, it is ongoing. This exhibition is not just about the past; it is a mirror of the present. It asks us to question who shapes history, who benefits from it, and whether democracy can truly evolve toward human dignity if truth itself remains obscured.

In the end, MONUMENTS reminded me that if freedom is to mean anything, it must be rooted in truth, not mythology.