Monuments for the Present

The Maryhill Integration Museum of Things Art group include: Beauty Osayomwanbor Nosa, Inna Hordiiko, Mehri Abdi, Rezvan Faghani, Sara Abdelnasser, Shahid Mahmood, Sadaf Syeda, Tanisha Sarkar, Tara Gomary, Tomilola Owolabi, Valentina Vodolazska and Valentyna Dolottseva. 

Monuments for the Present is an open-ended project that invites dialogue around diverse ideas of equality and public space. The works on display were co-created by participants from the Maryhill Integration Network Art Group with artist and heritage and art curators Paria Goodarzi, Mia Gubbay and Francesca Zappia. In recent years, public monuments in the UK have been the focus of debate and actions that have questioned dominant narratives of national identity that glorify violent imperialist extraction and white supremacy. The complex power struggles around these contested sites have made room for new forms of representation within the public realm. 

Monuments for the Present has come together through collaborative dialogue and artistic creation that has unfolded over the past nine months through a series of participatory action research workshops. The exhibition presents works created with different media and techniques, such as videos, collages and monuments made with the soap. These forms disrupt values intrinsic to traditional Western European monuments, providing space to re-imagine them as platforms for the diverse voices that make up Glasgow's social fabric.