“It's not Art, It’s State”: Rethinking the Feminist Interventions into the Mexican Monument of Independence through the Post-Aesthetic Concept of Emptiness and Leerraumkunst

Abstract

Leading the feminist intervention on the Mexican Monument of Independence, and further historical actions into commissions of the State, question have risen upon the “desecration” of identitarian monuments and artworks as to historically actualize them through a process of creative violence. Grounded upon Heidegger’s post-aesthetic concept of Raum or space, understood both as presence and emptiness in which to imprint meaning, along the newfound concept of Leerraumkunst, this research conducts a philosophical and historiographical study of the Monument of Independence, along with the feminist intervention upon it. Taking into consideration Heidegger’s term of “preservation” within art, this research will come to demonstrate how acts of intervention into the art of the State might become akin to such concept. This discussion will let us cross the bridge from the singularity of this historical event and monument, into an ontological truth that might question the mindless sacralization of the State’s identitarian art.