The Cacophony of Public Space: On Contested Histories in Lisbon and Zagreb

Public space as a ‘locus’ of meaning-making

When we attempt to reflect on the complexity, multi-layered nature, and contradictions of narratives about the past—which, by shaping particular images of that past, directly influence our present—it suffices to observe the public space. We are thus surrounded by the bearers of diverse narratives, including heritage institutions, monuments, memorial plaques, murals, and artistic interventions. Whether permanent or temporary, they function to materialize, legitimize, and reproduce the narratives they embody. Public space thereby becomes a ‘locus’ of meaning-making, that is, as a place that, through certain signifiers, in this case, artistic works, reflects cultural policies as well as dominant social and gender relations, both in historical and contemporary contexts.

In this text, I analyse examples of various forms of iconoclasm and newly erected monuments in Lisbon and Zagreb. These two leading capitals of post-transition states exhibit distinct features of the Southern European semi-periphery. Through this comparison, I demonstrate the contrasting logics of monument removal in postcolonial and postsocialist societies and public-space interventions in their respective sociopolitical contexts. Just as meanings are produced and presented, there also arises a need for them to be contested, and negotiated in different contexts. Such actions may take the form of symbolic gestures or theoretical debates, or involve the physical removal of contested monuments or other forms of intervention. Although the logics of postcolonialism and postsocialism differ, the indicators of a state management of collective memory may in fact express their very contradictions—that is, how state authorities and European bodies choose to engage, or decline to engage, with their contested memory landscapes.

All monuments should fall

The international debates that have unfolded over the past few years on the ideology of heritage were encouraged by iconoclastic attacks on monumental sculptures representing historical figures associated with settler colonialism and white supremacism in the United States. These interventions and attacks, including protest strategies predominantly led by the Black Lives Matter and its allies, arose due to century-long police repression, and saw a particular upsurge after the deadly arrest of George Floyd in 2020. As these events and practices gained momentum in the United States, critic and theorist Gene Ray connected Nancy Fraser’s ecological concept of ‘wilding’ to the act of attacking statues as a way of questioning dominant historical narratives.¹ For Fraser, such ‘wilding’ of public space corresponds to a weakening of consent for the political and cultural leadership of the dominant classes. Fraser describes this as a multifaceted crisis—of hegemony, ecology, economy, society, politics, and public health—whose effects proliferate and erode trust in dominant worldviews and ruling elites.²

Unlike the previous case of the ‘wilding’ of public space, in Lisbon, the capital of a former colonial power, certain efforts were made to ‘discipline’ both public space and public opinion, with the aim of consolidating the hegemonic historical consensus. One such instance was the 2017 proposal to establish a museum dedicated to the Portuguese ‘Discoveries’ in Lisbon, alongside the already established museums of discoveries in Belmonte (2009) and Porto (2014). The strategies employed by earlier museums frequently simplify the complexity of the subject matter, both in exhibition design and in the language used, in order to guide visitors through an engaging, interactive ‘journey’ through contested history, an orchestrated ‘spectacle’ in Debord’s sense.³ The Lisbon museum, which still has not opened, attracted heightened scholarly and public attention in 2018, following the publication of an open letter signed by historians and social scientists, which contended that designations such as ‘Museum of the Discoveries’ or ‘Museum of Portuguese Interculturality’ were inappropriate.

Such signifiers of the narrative of the Discoveries, of Portugal’s ‘Golden Age,’ of great navigators, explorers, and white civilizers, are present not only in museum displays⁴ but also in monumental public sculpture throughout Lisbon. One of the most grandiose examples is the monument of the same name, the ‘Monument to the Discoveries’ (Padrão dos Descobrimentos), erected in 1940. Originally conceived as a temporary structure for the Portuguese World Exhibition, the 50-metre-high, ship-shaped monument, constructed of reinforced concrete and depicting Portuguese figures associated with the history of colonialism, still stands on the bank of the Tagus River. It presents a romanticized idealization of Portuguese maritime expansion characteristic of António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo regime (1933–1974).

In 2021, drawing on the same symbol of the ship, the Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba juxtaposed her large-scale temporary installation ‘The Boat’ (O Barco) with the contested monument. The installation consists of around 140 large blocks of burnt wood that form the silhouette of the bottom of a ship, a space created to accommodate the bodies of millions of Africans, enslaved by European empires. In Western imaginary, a boat is readily associated with glory, freedom, and maritime expansion, often framed as ‘Discoveries.’ However, from the artist’s perspective, “a continent with millions of people cannot be discovered” nor “one of the longest and most horrendous chapters of humanity — Slavery — can be erased.”⁵ The installation was activated by a one-hour performance featuring thirty intergenerational Black Portuguese performers, all collaborators of Kilomba on the project and members of African diasporas living in Lisbon. As Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva notes: “The singularity of the representation resides in the fact that not only all the participants are Black, but the context of the performance—its historical references—comes from voices silenced by the history written by white people, so far.”⁶ However, as a reaction, the Portuguese far-right party ‘Ergue-te!’ shared an image on its official social media in which four people are depicted stepping on ‘The Boat,’ which the party claimed represented a “symbolic protest against the attacks on our History.” As Carvalho and Semedo point out, this protest sought to uphold the existing status quo and can therefore be understood as a form of resistance to changing the dominant narrative of Portuguese colonialism in public spaces. Such resistance rests on the belief that there is only one legitimate and objectively true account of the Portuguese colonial project—one that primarily reflects the colonisers’ perspective on imperial history.⁷

No monument should fall: on essentialist justifications of colonialism

At the same time with conversations on new Lisbon ‘Museum of the Discoveries,’ in 2017, the Lisbon municipality, the Society of Jesus, and the Santa Casa da Misericórdia, a Catholic lay brotherhood, inaugurated the statue to Father António Vieira. A 17^th century Portuguese Jesuit priest, who used his sermons to oppose the practice of indigenous enslavement in Brasil, was, at the same time, a proponent of Black, African slavery. Vieira is depicted surrounded by (kneeling) Indigenous children and described in the pedestal text as a “defender of Indigenous [Peoples] and of human rights.” Both the statue and the accompanying discourse omit a significant and problematic dimension of Vieira’s history, instead weaving a narrative of Portugal’s exceptionally benign colonial enterprise. Such interpretations are inspired by Gilberto Freyre’s concept of ‘Luso-tropicalism,’ that suffered various changes over time, but can be summarized as an ideological framework portraying Portuguese colonialism as uniquely adaptive and benevolent in its ‘civilising’ missions. By glossing over violence, exploitation, and oppression in Portuguese colonies and serving as a tool for legitimizing imperialism, the concept was frequently employed to politically justify Portuguese colonialism in Africa during the Estado Novo regime. In their text, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Anachronism,’ the authors highlight several anachronisms in the statue and the discourse surrounding it. For instance, the weathered green patina on this new bronze piece mimics the appearance of age, giving it the illusion of an ancient relic. The authors further explain:

“The eagerness to perpetuate the narrative of great men, to legitimate an exceptionalist view of Portugal’s colonial telos premised on the fiction of racial harmony, and of praising Vieira as a ‘defender of human rights’ — during the 17^th century, at which time this concept did not even exist—are premised on the instrumental deployment of anachronistic terminology attempting to characterize Vieira in terms both inconsistent and unfamiliar to the conceptual worlds he inhabited.”⁸

Given all this, it is hardly surprising that the blood-red word ‘descoloniza’ (decolonize), written across the plinth in 2020, was erased within a day — washed clean of the voices and and interpretations that do not align with the official narrative of Portuguese history. The intervention was publicly condemned by Portuguese President, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who called it a “truly imbecile” gesture, saying “it is hard not to know that Father António Vieira was one of the great figures in the country’s History. […] He fought for independence, was a great diplomat, was a very progressive man for his time.” The President also argued that “statues must be respected, and there is absolutely no reason to justify erasing History — otherwise it would start with King Afonso Henriques and move on to the Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower,” and added: “Everything would be gone!”⁹

A similar analogy was used by the Portuguese art historian Vítor Serrão when he wrote a series of articles for the Portuguese national daily newspaper ’Público’ on the same occasion, claiming that “violence against works of art is always a fascist act, whatever the reasons invoked or the flags unfurled to carry it out.” Serrão added: “Have we not all learned from History? It seems we have not understood — though we should — that all works of art (regardless of their greater or lesser aesthetic quality) are always trans-contextual and, moreover, are free of guilt for the misdeeds of human blindness.”¹⁰ Art historian and theorist Mariana Pinto dos Santos articulated three principal points of disagreement with Serrão. First, as Pinto dos Santos explains, Serrão seems to place works of art outside and above historical circumstances. Second, he assigns a similar elevated position to the art historians as if they were uniquely responsible for discerning and protecting the supposedly universal, “trans-contextual” value of art. Third, he treats all forms of vandalism as equally serious and even equates vandalism with outright destruction, interpreting both as barbaric and hostile to civilization.¹¹ As Daniel Palacios González notes, the “conflictive nature [of the monuments] is explicit in the need for their conservation, given that a fundamental component of state action following the construction or declaration of monuments is litigating vandalism and iconoclasm.”¹² When driven spontaneously ‘from below’ by the people, revolutionary iconoclasm typically entails the removal of monuments honoring the most troubling historical figures associated with the colonial imaginary and imperial history. However, postsocialist iconoclasm involves the iconoclastic destruction of Socialist, Soviet, and antifascist monuments across the former East in the period following the historical rupture of 1989.

Should all monuments fall?

At first glance, as Gal Kirn explains, revolutionary and postsocialist iconoclasm do appear similar. Both authorities and protesters remove monuments they view as symbolic embodiments of oppressive and authoritarian regimes. Yet, despite the shared logic through which postsocialist and postcolonial iconoclastic movements confront entrenched power, they emerge from distinct histories, formations, and political trajectories. The years 1989–1991 marked not only a transition from socialism to democracy but a broader restructuring of ideological, economic, and political life. Socialist pasts were reframed through a totalitarian lens, depicted as alien to emerging national cultures and new nation-states. Antifascist memory—once central to Europe’s postwar imaginary—waned, while new antitotalitarian memory regimes in the European Union further blurred distinctions among diverse historical systems and experiences.¹³ A wave of monumental iconoclasm emerging in Croatia since the 1990s has been closely intertwined with the historical revisionism of the Partisan–socialist legacy across all levels of society. Its initial target were the symbols, representations, and narratives of the Partisan–socialist memoryscape. Kirn further elaborates three key commemorative strategies of historical revisionism that have emerged: (1) a radical phase of destruction involving the systematic removal of monuments; (2) a softer revisionism that transformed existing Partisan monuments by replacing red stars with Christian crosses, new national flags, or by adding the names of local fascists or soldiers from the 1990s Homeland War; and (3) the proliferation of new nationalist, reconciliationist, and even fascist monuments across the post-Yugoslav space.¹⁴

From the 1990s to the present, the memorial landscape of the former Yugoslav states has been significantly devastated, and in Zagreb in particular historical revisionism has accelerated through the systematic erasure of collective memory. Of the 512 commemorative markers (monuments, memorial plaques, busts, and other memorial forms such as reliefs, memorial tombs, and sculptures) erected in the city of Zagreb between the end of the Second World War and 1990, as many as 276 had been removed by 2025, amounting to 54%.¹⁵ If we also analyse this issue through a gendered lens, the problem becomes even more complex. It becomes evident that women were among the most prominent casualties of postsocialist iconoclasm.

With the exception of the 1939 commemorative relief dedicated to Marija Jambrišak, a Croatian educator and writer, female historical figures from before the Second World War were not part of the repertoire of Zagreb’s public sculpture. In other words, women appeared as political subjects in public space only after 1945, either through portraits of real historical figures (such as People’s Heroes) or through group scenes depicting wartime, revolutionary, or labor-related themes. Viewed from this angle, it is important to note that only a few busts of antifascist women who survived the purges remain in Zagreb today, and that temporary interventions in public space—such as exhibitions, performances, educational tours, and urban walks¹⁶ — have become key means of disseminating this forgotten labor and women’s history to a wider public.

One example of such artistic interventions is Antonio Grgić’s project ‘Shadows,’ in which he uses graphite pencils in a performance to draw the shadows of demolished monuments at the very spots where they once stood. The performance leaves a material trace on the pavement in the form of a drawn shadow, which itself becomes a monument to the destroyed monument. Over time, this shadow drawing gradually fades, creating space for reflection on the symbolic content that was violently removed from the public sphere. Thus, in 2017, he drew a monument to the Antifascist Women’s Front entitled ‘The (Im)possible Monument to Women’s Emancipation’ on the city’s main square.

Alongside historical revisionism and monumental iconoclasm in the postsocialist context, from the 1990s onward Croatia also saw a growing phenomenon of new monuments that, on the one hand, openly glorify—or, on the other, deny or distort—the local fascist past and its repercussions. ‘The Monument to the Victims of the Holocaust and the Ustasha Regime,’ erected in the center of Zagreb in 2022, belongs to the latter group. Initially, a few years before its construction, the monument was intended to be dedicated solely to the victims of the Holocaust who were deported from that site to Auschwitz and never returned. However, following public reactions and intense debate, its name was modified to include a mild reference to the existence of concentration camps at that time on Croatian soil, in what was then the so-called Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state that operated an entire complex of extermination camps. Today, the very existence of some of these camps is denied; in other cases, their function is disputed (whether they were children’s camps, labor camps, or death camps); and for those whose existence and function are incontrovertibly documented, public discourse often challenges the number of victims.¹⁷

On the plaque placed next to the monument, the following inscription appears today in several languages: “In memory of victims of the Holocaust and the Ustasha regime — From this place, around 800 Zagreb Jews were deported to the Nazi camp Auschwitz in August 1942,” without naming any of the camps of the fascist Independent State of Croatia, nor acknowledging the many other social groups that suffered in this region during the Second World War, such as Serbs, Roma, and other political prisoners. Some of them were transported to Ustasha camps by the locomotive that still stands just a few meters from the plaque—colloquially known as ‘Crna Katica.’ Yet this locomotive remains insufficiently contextualized, marked only by a label listing its technical specifications rather than providing its historical background.

Accordingly, from the 1990s onward, rewriting official historical narratives in the territory of the former Yugoslavia required the removal of signifiers that either failed to affirm or directly contradicted these newly constructed accounts. It is therefore crucial to interrogate the foundations of such discourses, challenge its authorities, and examine the history of the representational battlefield—whether through practices of erasing and suppressing dissenting voices and their signifiers, as in postsocialist iconoclasm, or through maintaining the status quo in the monumental landscape of the former colonial powers alongside the introduction of new anachronistic symbols that perpetuate a romanticized vision of the imperial past while exculpating or avoiding acknowledgment of inequality, extractivism, racism, enslavement, killing, and the many other issues at the core of imperial and colonial logics.

Footnotes

1. Ray, Gene. 2021. “All Monuments Must Fall – Thinking Through the Proposition.” ISSUE – Journal of art & design HEAD – Genève. URL: https://www.hesge.ch/head/issue/en/publications/all-monuments-must-fall-gene-ray. ↩︎
2. Fraser, Nancy. 2021. “Climates of Capital: For a Trans-Environmental Eco-Socialism.” New Left Review 127, pp. 94-127. URL: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii127/articles/nancy-fraser-climates-of-capital. ↩︎
3. Debord, Guy. 1967. La société du spectacle. Editions Buchet-Chastel. ↩︎
4. In the meantime, several exhibitions have taken place that problematized and critically reassessed colonial history, the dichotomy in narratives about Portuguese culture and art, as well as the provenance and social impact of artifacts in Portuguese heritage institutions. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the exhibition ‘Troubles with Primitivism—a view from Portugal’ (curators Mariana Pinto dos Santos and Marta Mestre), which was held in 2024 in Guimarães. ↩︎
5. “Grada Kilomba: O Barco/The Boat.” CONTEMPORARY AND (C&). URL: https://contemporaryand.com/en/events/grada-kilomba-o-barco-the-boat. ↩︎
6. Sanchez-Kozyreva, Cristina. 2021. “Grada Kilomba: O Barco – An Essential Acknowledgement.” Contemporânea. URL: https://contemporanea.pt/en/editions/10-11-12-2021/grada-kilomba-o-barco. ↩︎
7. Carvalho, Sofia and Alice Semedo. 2023. “Contested Heritage and Colonialism in Portugal: A State of Cognitive Dissonance.” ICOFOM Study Series (50-2), pp. 20-32. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/iss.4381. ↩︎
8. Beleza Barreiros, Inês et al. 2021. “The Unbearable Lightness of Anachronism: Practices of Monument-making and the Guardians of Historical Consensus.” GSG – Magazine for Contemporary Art and Social Issues of From the Citizens to Their City Initiative, pp. 180-195. URL: https://www.artseverywhere.ca/gsg3-othering-periphery/. ↩︎
9. Lusa, and Liliana Borges. 2020. “Marcelo: É ‘Verdadeiramente Imbecil’ Vandalização de Estátua do Padre António Vieira.” Público, June 15. URL: https://www.publico.pt/2020/06/15/politica/noticia/marcelo-verdadeiramente-imbecil-vandalizacao-estatua-padre-antonio-vieira-1920606#. ↩︎
10. Serrão, Vítor. 2020. “Contra Todos os Iconoclasmas.” Público, June 13. URL: https://www.publico.pt/2020/06/13/opiniao/noticia/iconoclasmas-1920437. ↩︎
11. Pinto dos Santos, Mariana. 2022. “As Estátuas e a História da Arte: o Debate sobre Vandalização de Monumentos em Portugal.” In Arte e Monumentos: entre o Esquecimento e a Memória. Paulo Henrique Duarte-Feitoza and Rubens Pilegi da Silva Sá, eds. Cegraf UFG, pp.171–210. ↩︎
12. Palacios González, Daniel. 2024. “Monument.” In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Ihab Saloul and Britt Baillie, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61493-5_23-1. ↩︎
13. Kirn, Gal. 2025. “Monumental Iconoclasm after 1989: Between Postsocialism and Decolonialism?” In [Counter-]Monuments. Transitory Memory Practices in Public Space. Maria Engelskirchen, Ursula Frohne, Corinna Kühn, and Marianne Wagner, eds. Transcript Publishing, pp. 64-79. ↩︎
14. Kirn, Gal. 2020. The Partisan Counter-Archive: Retracing the Ruptures of Art and Memory in the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle. De Gruyter, pp. 211-246. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682069-005. ↩︎
15. This figure of 512 commemorative markers includes three erected after 1991, all of which were installed in 2015. Šimunković, Mario. 2025. “Reinterpretacija sjećanja na Drugi svjetski rat na primjeru spomen obilježja od 1990. godine do danas u sjeverozapadnoj Hrvatskoj.” Tragovi (8/2), pp. 86-120. URL: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/487964. ↩︎
16. In this regard, it is worth emphasizing the project ‘Zagreb Squares Do Not Remember Women’ (2014), created by Sanja Horvatinčić and Mario Kikaš in collaboration with the curatorial collective BLOK. This urban tour aimed to critically engage with public sculpture and to address the class and gender politics shaping memory in Zagreb’s public space. Special emphasis was placed on tracing both lost and preserved examples of the public representation of women as subjects in the antifascist struggle and the socialist revolution. Another example is Tihana Bertek’s 2020 urban tour ‘Fragments of Women’s History in Trešnjevka,’ organized as part of the activities of the Trešnjevka Neighborhood Museum, which prompted local kindergartens to engage with their own histories. For instance, the kindergarten ‘Potočnica’ in Trešnjevka—opened in 1965 under the name ‘Marica Pataki Children’s Center’—was renamed ‘Potočnica’ in the 1990s, and the bust of Marica Pataki, a prominent antifascist, was removed. ↩︎
17. See, for example, Geiger, Vladimir. 2020. “Pitanje broja žrtava logora Jasenovac u hrvatskoj i srpskoj historiografiji, publicistici i javnosti nakon raspada SFR Jugoslavije – činjenice, kontroverze i manipulacije.” Časopis za suvremenu povijest (52/2), pp. 517-587. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22586/csp.v52i2.11253. ↩︎