Silent Monumentalism and the Question of the Lost Monument

Some monuments are destroyed. Some disappear. Some collapse. When that happens, the question is not only whether we can rebuild them, but what it means to remember them.

The Silence Monument project shows one way of responding: through multimedia, digital reconstruction, and AR, it brings back the image and presence of a lost monument without rebuilding it physically. It works with memory, history, and technology to keep the monument visible in culture.

My work begins from a different place.

I am not interested in rebuilding what is gone. I am interested in what remains when something is gone.

Mukurob (God’s Finger) no longer stands. Its absence is real. Instead of replacing it with a copy, Silent Monumentalism asks:
What if a monument does not have to be a thing?
What if a monument can be a presence, a structure, a space to stand in front of?
What if absence itself becomes part of the monument?

Silent Monumentalism is not about representation. It is not about illustration. It is not about storytelling. It is about form, space, and presence before meaning.

In my drawings and structural studies, I do not show Mukurob. I do not describe it. I do not rebuild it. I build a place for attention. A place where form stands, where space holds it, and where the viewer can meet something that is no longer there — without being told what to think.

Where the Silence Monument project uses technology to bring back an image, Silent Monumentalism uses restraint, structure, and space to hold memory without replacing what was lost.

This is not a monument that pretends nothing disappeared.
This is a monument that includes disappearance.

"This is what I mean by Silent Monumentalism

The monument is not only the stone.
The monument is also the air around the stone.
The space where it stood.
The memory of its standing.
The silence it left behind." - Pieter Lategan 2026

|_ 19 Feb 2026 12:58 _|