Colonial Wounds/Postcolonial Repair

Book excerpt: This companion volume to the Colonial Wounds/Postcolonial Repair exhibition at James Madison University's Duke Hall Gallery of Fine Art contributes to debates about monuments, historical amnesia, and memories of war and colonialism. It includes essays by co-curators Maureen G. Shanahan and Beth Hinderliter and by internationally renowned Algerian artist Amina Menia, whose installation Monuments in Exile: An Infinite Page of Marble Writing was created especially for the exhibition and interrogates collective memory, the specter of the past, and the possibilities for resignifying the monuments and denuded plinths that remain in Algeria. The authors examine the wounds of World War I and the legacy of French colonial monuments constructed in Algeria, many of which were dismantled, defaced, or repurposed after the revolution in 1962. This volume is beautifully illustrated with rare color images from 1916 to 1919 by Jules Gervais-Courtellemont and color lantern slides by the Lumière brothers, as well as little-known French and German photography and medical illustrations from the era.