Monumenting
&
And then, they start to matter

Monument stories and fieldwork traces from Kuwait and beyond

By Anahi Alviso-Marino, Kuwait City 28 May 2025

In recent years, monuments worldwide have gained increasing attention, sparking debates and actions ranging from dismantling and toppling them to extravagant constructions, relocations, and reassessments of their significance. From Kuwait City to Jeddah, Aden, Sana’a, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah or Dubai—and mostly since the 1970s until present day —cities across the Arabian Peninsula have been both transformative and transformed settings for monument stories, where myriad gestures and actions by a constellation of actors contribute to reimagining the symbolic work monuments do.

Among these are stories of bifurcations, omissions, transformations, and decisions that render these monumental objects unfinished, invisible, or inaccessible—stories that particularly capture our imagination. These are certainly complex, multilayered narratives, and retracing them involves researching how objects meant to commemorate sites, events, and figures open up new imaginaries of futurity.

At Contemporary Art Platform Gallery in Kuwait, a twofold invitation to dive into these narratives and monument stories takes place: we invite you to the screening of the documentary film Monumenting and its accompanying exhibition And then, they start to matter.

What makes a monument become a monument? In Monumenting (53’), participants in a game-like protocol engage with this and other questions by guessing rather than asserting what they know. They take us to Dubai, Kuwait City, Abu Dhabi, and Sana’a—places where they live, have lived, or perhaps neither. Their kaleidoscopic exchanges produce a different kind of knowledge about the future of the past, about what monuments are, and what they could become.

As a preamble to the film screening, the exhibition And then, they start to matter displays a treasure trove of selected research and archival materials gathered during fieldwork dedicated to retracing monument biographies reflected in the documentary film, and beyond. These materials and archives tell multiple stories about monuments, the cities in which they live, and the diverse group of actors who participate in their making and un-making. They also offer a glimpse into the inner workings of research in social sciences: fieldwork rabbit holes, research puzzles, and the myriad contributors who help piece these stories together.

Together, the film and exhibition invite viewers to reflect on the evolving biographies of monuments—and the many meanings they come to hold.