THE HAGUE.- Stroom Den Hague presents Since we last spoke about monuments, an exhibition curated by Mihnea Mircan. If traditional monuments correspond to the failure of old ideologies, what are the shapes and visual processes that would translate the dramatic changes in contemporary political or social life? Which are the victories, gaps or losses that deserve, today, monumental sites of public negotiation? These were the questions that Romanian curator Mihnea Mircan posed to a number of international artists, including Sam Durant, Jonas Staal, Hans van Houwelingen, Alon Levin and Azra Aksamija, invited to participate in the exhibition 'Since we last spoke about monuments' at Stroom Den Haag. The projects that resulted from this dialogue, accompanied by a number of existing works (Matthew Buckingham, Irwin, Ciprian Muresan and others), span a variety of media and ask resonant questions about our uses of memory and monumentality. They interrogate the necessity, meanings and possibility of a contemporary monument.

Most monuments are metaphors of political imbalance – they divide history between winners and losers, they speak about and to imaginary communities, they commemorate events and terminate debates about them. Today's ideological convulsions go in tandem with new forms of making and writing history, of communality or marginality, all refusing the static grandeur of traditional monuments. The exhibition ‘Since we last spoke about monuments’ aims to contribute to this discussion, by exposing the monumental to complicated histories and lingering conflicts, to imagination and dissent.

Azra Aksamija has created a kilim (Bosnian wall carpet) that narrates the systematic destruction of mosques during the war in Bosnia, converting the spiritual symbols of the kilim into signifiers of aggression and threatened collectivity. Jonas Staal and Vincent van Gerven Oei present a provocative monument dedicated to the 'alienated citizen of Rotterdam', while Office KGDVS exhibit the architectural model of a border, inviting reflection on processes of social exclusion. Other projects engage the construction, destruction or reconstruction of monuments as ways of making sense of our recent past and immediate future.

The exhibition is part of the program 'nu monument' which investigates the (im)possibility of a contemporary monument. Can contemporary art really give meaning to the creation and maintenance of a collective consciousness; to the remembrance, commemoration or even glorification of persons or events? More information about ’nu monument' can be found in the web file on the website of Stroom.

The artists: Azra Aksamija (AT), Matthew Buckingham (US), Sam Durant (US), Office KGDVS (B), Hans van Houwelingen (NL), Irwin (SLO), Alon Levin (NL), Metahaven (NL), Ciprian Muresan (RO), Tom Nicholson (AU), Jonas Staal & Vincent van Gerven Oei (NL), Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor (RO).

Mihnea Mircan (RO) curated the exhibition ‘Sublime Objects’ and the 'Under Destruction' series of interventions at the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC) in Bucharest, Romania. He was the curator of 'Low-Budget Monuments', the Romanian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007). He contributes regularly to international publications. Thru December 2008 he will stay in a guest apartment of Kosmopolis Den Haag. For questions concerning the exhibition, he can be reached through Stroom.

The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation and the American Embassy in The Hague. Special thanks to Kosmopolis Den Haag.