Who?

As the title suggested, Who? asked viewers to speculate on the identity behind this sculptural installation. The work could be seen as a monument in doubt. Its apparent incompleteness and lack of identity granted agency to the viewers. They could imagine that the boots belonged to a specific historical figure or invent new stories about them. The patina and historical appearance seemed to suggest that they had already been ‘walking’ for quite some time. Who was the work about, and what was the story behind its presence-cum-absence?

Beyond the question of identity, the work challenged viewers to consider who had the right to be represented in public space. We lived and walked inside the fiction that we called ‘the city.’ We read and wrote about the metropolis, thereby contributing to its narratives. But who was visible? Who had a voice, and who had the authority to write these stories?

Iván Argote enjoyed playing with views and expectations. He conceived most of his projects as proposals for what a monument could be. He questioned the dominant historical narratives and symbols of power as they manifested themselves in public space—whether through ephemeral, unauthorized, and performative interventions to existing statues or through permanent new installations. His works not only grappled with long histories of nation-building and colonial exclusion but also suggested new visions of who should be included in the registers of collective memory. By covering statues with ponchos, dismembering them to create generic typologies, or filling them with wildflowers, the artist used fiction, poetry, and humor as critical devices for decentering and decolonizing public space.

Who? was part of an ongoing and evolving series of sculptures—a corpus of ‘doubt-monuments’ that would materialize in different locations, creating new resonances and dissonances.