Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Issue 1 | Page 47

sculpture.
This empty monument offers a resonant context for Owen’s new work, a reworked
life-size figure of a nymph (made just a few years after the monument
itself opened). In Owen’s re-working, the entire torso has been re-shaped
into a series of interlinked chains. Only the gentle indent of a navel on the
lowest link survives, to allude to what has been removed. The work is the
first female figure that Owen has worked on, and in tune with previous
sculptures, his intervention re-activates the figure, drawing out truths
already latent in the figure’s original form. Precisely in the removal of some
of the more overtly sexual qualities of the figure (the breasts, the curve of
the waist), Owen lays bare the strategies of the original sculpture. Her head
collapsed, her body disjointed, the nymph appears eroded and collapsed by
two centuries of the male gaze.
There are very few women represented in Edinburgh’s impressive collection
of monuments (indeed there are almost as many representations of animals
as women). And while the female form was a mainstay of nineteenth century
memorials, it was most often chosen as a cipher to embody abstract ideas
and ideals – whether ‘justice’, the ‘genius of architecture’, or, in the case of
Owen’s nymph, as a repository for male fantasy. The original statue which
provides the raw material for Owen’s contemporary re-working, as well as
the setting in which it is located, speak the classic language of monuments,
invoking the architecture of gods to confer immortality on the individual
commemorated. But in Owen’s playful deconstruction, the artist invites us
to reflect not on an individual, but on who and what we immortalise.
Lost Monuments
Bani Abidi has long been interested in the forms and materials of
remembering. Her film installation, Death at a 30 degree angle, (����), explores
the efforts of a politician to ensure his memory is preserved for posterity.
Abidi’s film follows him as he visits the studio of the monumental sculptor
who has been commissioned to portray him and attempts to identify the
costume and gesture which will best secure him a place in the annals. The
irony, of course, is the absolute redundancy of the idiom, as we remember the
endless monumental portraits of communist leaders, overthrown dictators
or imperial functionaries, languishing in storage around the world.
Her new work, Memorial to Lost Words, draws on the more ephemeral medium
of sound to reflect on things which have not been commemorated in the
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