Exposure Therapy: Spectacles, Monuments and the Question of Care

This text is part of an ongoing critical conversation between the authors that began in 2015 about who public monuments are for. It is informed by the authors’ double positions as descendant relatives of Aboriginal historical figures represented by public monuments as well as observers of an emerging cultural obsession with public monuments that commemorate traumatic colonial events. In this dialogical text Alizzi and Lehman discuss their shared relationship to monuments through a series of examples in cultural practice and public art, across Australia and Turtle Island (North America). In particular, the authors consider the public work, Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, a permanently installed commemorative marker, commissioned by the City of Melbourne and produced by Wiradjuri artist Brook Andrew and settler artist and designer Trent Walter in late 2016. In the chapter that follows, the authors reflect upon Christina Sharpe’s notion of wake work and through it identify a need for a deeper ethical relationship of care between the living and those who have passed when engaging in acts of memorialisation.