Reclaiming Spaces: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Made of imperishable stone or metal, and placed in public spaces, public monuments were meant to be a genuine testimonial of the people’s memory. Memory is suppressed, integrated, or romanticized for national memory which then eventually becomes history or truth. Monuments were “true” only insofar as they seemed to display the people’s hearts.

Anti-monumentalism, on the contrary, challenges convention of reception by inviting close, bodily encounter by visitors. I want to prompt the viewers to think about and question the heroic individualism and the stability of national narratives. The engravings on the monoliths mark the time of the point in history that was recorded as the supposed point that America was involved with military bases in Vietnam. This questions the moments in history as something linear.