Malmö, Sweden
The commission to design Malmö's anti-racist monument has been awarded to Santiago Mostyn and Susanna Marcus Jablonski. Their sculptural monument, titled “Master Narratives,” will be installed in Jesusparken (Falsterboplan) in the Möllevången neighbourhood during the second half of 2025. The monument is the result of a citizens initiative highlighting the lack of public recognition of the racist motives behind deadly attacks that took place in Malmö between 2003 and 2010.
In their proposal, Marcus Jablonski and Mostyn take on the question of how to represent events that have left no physical trace in the landscape or archives – how one can acknowledge a painful history while also looking towards shared futures:
- In recent years, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the potential of monuments. Through the process, we’ve come to a definition of the monument as an object or space with a dual responsibility to the past and to the ongoing present, a responsibility that inevitably shifts over time, like memory itself." say the artists Susanna Marcus Jablonski and Santiago Mostyn.
The monument consists of two parts: a sculptural and a social element. The social aspect proposes a collective memory process, developed in collaboration with local community organisers.
Malmö residents will have the opportunity to write down thoughts, feelings, and memories from this period, which will be collected and placed in the ground beneath the sculptural monument. The sculptural element of the proposal is a monumental stone and bronze sculpture that, materially, expresses the strength and possibility that arises when we stand in solidarity with each other. A massive block of sedimentary stone is lifted by a mass of thin bronze rods. The collective strength of the rods makes it technically possible to bear the enormous weight of the stone. The gesture is at once simple and powerful: a great weight is carried by many.
