Symbolically inscribing the city: public monuments in Mali, 1995-2002.

Rarely in a lifetime do we have the privilege and good fortune to know and to work with a truly magical person. Roy Sieber was that person to me. Roy was my major professor at Indiana University, my mentor, my colleague at the Smithsonian, and my friend. His passion for African arts was rooted not in the object itself, isolated and rarefied, but in the search for the creative impulse and aesthetic intention that lay behind and emerged within it. It was aesthetic intention--at the broadest level of culture and at the level of the individual artist--that gave an artwork form and import and that determined its use.

Although Roy delighted in masks and sculptures, his interest extended to everything from stools to pottery, textiles, beads, and barber signs. He encouraged an intimacy with objects, one that comes from continual looking and handling. Several years ago, when Roy was curating the exhibition "Hair in African Art and Culture," he and Frank Herreman came to see the African collections at the National Museum of Natural History We spent the morning in the storerooms. Each drawer pulled or cabinet opened was an adventure as Roy's gaze swept across the objects and alighted on one or another splendid or quirky piece. The looking, then relooking with new eyes, the commentary, the discussions, were energizing. The experience so transcended the mundane that it forcefully reminded me just why I was working in the visual arts, and why at the Smithsonian.

In the mid-1990s public monuments began to appear in Bamako, the capital city of Mall more than twenty-five were erected between 1995 and 2002 (Fig. 1). (1) While commemorative monuments have been familiar features of the landscape in other nation-states for centuries, and part of national historiographies, Mali had never before invested in public sculpture; historical memory was encoded primarily in oral and performance arts. The investment in such largescale works represents a new direction for the government, and it marks a concerted effort to refashion the visual and symbolic landscape of the city in the popular imagination. The use of public monuments to shape and anchor national memory recalls the discussions of Pierre Nora: "Modern memory is, above all, archival. It relies entirely on the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image" (1989:13).

The public sculpture initiative was launched by President Alpha Konare, who was elected in 1992. Most of the new works have been built in and around Bamako, although several projects were envisioned for regional capitals throughout the country. The monuments were conceived by the president and a circle of advisors, and then designed in collaboration with Malian architects. Many of them draw upon local architectural and sculptural forms for inspiration. Monuments that include representational sculpture, whether portraits of Malian heroes, allegorical figures, or even symbolic animals, are most often rendered in a highly naturalistic manner. A majority are fashioned in the Socialist Realist style that characterizes public sculptures produced after the 1930s in the former Soviet Union and those that continue to be created today in China and North Korea.

Supporters see the program as beautifying the city and bringing Bamako in line with other world capitals, where elaborate sculptural displays commemorate heroic national histories. Indeed, many of the monuments are located on traffic circlees or public plazas and boulevards, intended as highly visible signals of the country's new political, cultural, and economic vibrancy under the Konar4 government. They are frequently set in well-manicured gardens surrounded by low fences that provide small green oases around which vehicular and pedestrian traffic surges. These carefully tended spaces stand in marked contrast to much of the city, whose population has rapidly expanded over the past two decades and which is experiencing unchecked sprawl.

Yet, though closely linked to architecture and urban planning, the project is much more than an effort at urban beautification. The sculptures are part of a well-articulated political program. They are central to the government's cultural politics, and they represent a particular vision of patriotism, civilization, and nationalism. In a newspaper interview, Pascal Baba Coulibaly, the cultural advisor to the president, stated that these monuments "combine historical, aesthetic, and utilitarian functions" (L'Independant 1996:6).

In 1960 the government of Modibo Keita, first president of the newly independent nation of Mall invested a great deal of its cultural politics in oral and performance genres, such as theater, dance, song, and music, that were already highly developed and popular forms of art. In reaction to French colonial historiography, a strong emphasis was placed on Mall's precolonial history, including the ancient empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. Performances celebrated this history, linking it to the ideals of the new state.

President Konare's public sculpture program has shifted this emphasis and stands as a conscious effort to assert a visual and material control over Mali's colonial and postcolonial history. Even as his government continued to give official support to oral and performance cultural forms, it also invested heavily in public monuments as critical sites for the production of national identity. These monuments' emphasis on the colonial and late colonial periods creates ideological spaces that are less ethnically bounded than those of the ancient empires and that refocus people's attention on more recent history to which all Malians today might claim a share.

Prior to the 1992 initiative, public sculptures were never a striking feature of the urban landscape. The few large statues of early French administrators sited on public squares had been removed at independence in 1960. Only one prominent colonial monument remains. Located on a traffic circle adjacent to the Bamako city hall and the Ministry of Education, it was originally dedicated to West African soldiers who fought alongside the French in World War 1 (Fig. 2). The conception and artistic vocabulary of the War Memorial is in a familiar late-nineteenth-century French academic style. The bronze figural group, sculpted by Paul Moureau Vauthier in France in 1922 and installed in Bamako in 1924, represents soldiers, both African and European, who stand united in a heroic attitude of struggle and determination. The base is conceived as a palisade evoking the trenches of World War I battlefields. Inscribed on each corner are the major battle sites in Europe and West Africa where French West African troops participated. These include Verdun and Alsace as well as locales in Togo and Cameroon. Nearly 25,000 Malians lost their lives fighting for France in World War I. A dedication plaque, however, only lists the French colonial administrators under whose patronage the monument was erected. The more recent addition of two artillery guns from the World War II era extends the iconography of military heroism and service to include the many Malians who fought with the Free French forces in Europe and North Africa. This memorial has retained its iconic status and its relevance as a representation of a heroic Malian history through the process of annual ceremonial renewal which honors the sacrifices that these soldiers made for the state.

The monuments built under the Konare government differ from the War Memorial in the clear postcolonial ideological thrust of their iconography. Their subject matter promotes a national identity by valorizing and linking the heroic personages of Mali's anticolonial movement, which culminated in independence in 1960, with the heroes of the democracy movement of the 1980s. The latter ultimately resulted in the overthrow in 1991 of the government of President Moussa Traore, a single-party state, and the establishment in 1992 of a multiparty democratic state.

The first two monuments built were the Independence Monument and the Monument to the Martyrs, both dedicated in 1995. Taken together, they illustrate the ideology that orchestrates the larger public sculpture project. Both are intended to commemorate key political moments in recent Malian history: one, the end of colonialism in 1960, and the other, the political struggles leading to the downfall of President Traore's regime. As a visual text the two monuments link in the popular imagination two distinct national movements and two generations separated by more than forty years.

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The Independence Monument is sited in the center of a traffic circle at one end of Independence Avenue (Fig. 3). The central form is a tower-like structure that draws its inspiration from colonial architecture, still visible in the city, which was itself based on Western Sudanic precolonial vernacular mud-brick architecture. This style has come to symbolize an authentic and thoroughly Malian architectural vocabulary.

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Bronze plaques encircling the base of the monument are inscribed with the names of men and women from throughout the country who were recipients of the Medal of Honor at independence. The names are organized by region and administrative circle. The plaques extend the sense of ownership of this history to the nation at large. As with the War Memorial, a ceremony of renewal takes place each year at the monument on the anniversary of independence, September 22.

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The Monument to the Martyrs, surrounded by gardens and fountains, occupies the boulevard on a main street leading to one of the two bridges that link the city on either side of the Niger River (Fig. 4). It is dedicated to those who died fighting the Traore government. The mosaic, designed by the Malian artist Ishmael Diabate, depicts the street marches by student protesters on March 22, 1991, that were violently put down by the state. It looms over a bronze statue of a mother mourning over the body of her son. March 22 remains a day of national commemoration, with ceremonies held at the monument and at cemeteries in Barnako.

A second example of this same ideological linking of generations and struggles is evident in two monuments that were dedicated in June 1996. They were designed by the same architect in an identical style. The first commemorates Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly, a leader in the independence movement against the French. The second is dedicated to Abdoul Karim Camara, a student leader in the democracy movement, which began in 1980 (Figs. 5, 6). Each includes a bronze statue of the national hero. The monument to Coulibaly sits in garden space next to one of the main roads, while the monument to Camara sits on the traffic circle at the entry to the quarter where he lived.

Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly was born in 1909 in what is now Burkina Faso and died in 1958 on the eve of independence for French West African colonies. He is depicted in the monument as a mature man wearing European dress. Coulibaly attended the prestigious Ecole William Ponty in Dakar, Senegal, and was a teacher, intellectual, political activist, and a member of the RDA (Rassemblement Democratique Africain), a territorial political party in French West Africa, founded in 1946. The RDA was the meeting ground for all African nationalist political parties. At the dedication of the monument, the Minister of Culture and Communication, Bakary Koniba Traore, characterized Coulibaly as a "son of Africa" whose strength and intelligence were generously placed at the service of the struggle against colonialism, a struggle that recognizes no national boundaries (L'Essor 1996:1).

Abdoul Karim Camara is known popularly as Cabral, a nickname he took to honor the memory of Amilcar Cabral, who fought for Guinea-Bissau's independence from the Portuguese. Camara was a leader of the National Union of Students and was active in the democracy movement. In 1980 he was arrested and tortured; he died in jail. At the dedication of the monument to this leader, Bakary Koniba Traore saluted not only Camara but also the 200 students and 20 professors who, beginning with the students' protest in 1980, lost their lives opposing the repressive Traore government (L'Essor 1996:1). Periodic celebrations at this monument renew its efficacy as a "lieu de memoire."

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Another monument, the History Wall, was built in 1997-98. Several hundred feet long, the wail consolidates about 150 years into a narrative that recalls historical moments in the anticolonial movement (Fig. 7). The wall is sited at the summit of Koulouba hill. There a crossroads leads, in one direction, to the Presidential Palace (once the colonial governor's palace); in the other, a main road out of the city symbolically connects the national government to the country at large.

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The History Wall features twenty-six separate painted panels that include representations of Malian resistance leaders from the late nineteenth century, key French colonial administrators from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and individuals and groups involved in the nationalist movement in the mid-twentieth century--among them politicians, Malian World War II troops, and two cultural heroes, Aoua Keita, the writer, and Bazouma Sissoko, the celebrated griot. The images--thirty-one in all--are copied from drawings, prints, and photographs culled from various archives in France and Mali. A number of them are well known, having long been used to illustrate school textbooks. Many were also published in Mali in a 1983 book written by Alpha Konare and Adam Ba Konare, Les grandes dates du Mali.

The wall is organized loosely into three periods. Reading from right to left, the first group depicts key players in the nationalist struggles of the mid-twentieth century. The second depicts French penetration into the territory as well as key figures in the resistance to the establishment of colonial rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The third group includes a number of early colonial officials, both French and Malians.

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Two portraits frame the History Wall. One is of Modibo Keita, nationalist leader and first president of Mall (Fig. 8), who is represented on the end of the wall closest to the Presidential Palace. The other is of General Louis Faidherbe, colonial governor of the fledgling colony of Senegal in 1854-61, who is considered by historians to be the architect of French expansion into west and central Mali (Fig. 9). His image is located on the opposite end, in the direction leading to the military base at Kati, a few kilometers down the road.

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Keita was born in 1915 in Bamako and, like Daniel Quezzin Coulibaly, was educated at the Ecole William Ponty. A schoolteacher and politician, he co-founded the political party Bloc Soudanais, which merged with the Rassemblement Democratique Africaine in 1946. In 1960 Keita was elected president and became the architect of the new nation's socialist government. The failure of its political program and economic policies led to a coup d'etat in 1968. In the 1990s the Konare government rehabilitated Keita as a nationalist hero, downplaying his failures. Interestingly the image chosen for the History Wall shows Keita dressed in a Western suit. The image he himself cultivated during his presidency, and which appears in official portraits and on Malian currency of the period, always shows him wearing a Malian kaftan, or boubou.

The portrait of Louis Faidherbe, in full military dress, is based on an image published in Les grandes dates du Mali (Konare & Konare 1983:292). Faidherbe, a career officer, aimed to establish French hegemony on the Senegal River and overland to the Niger River in present-day Mali. He and his successors established, by either conquest or treaty, a series of fortified posts moving eastward from Senegal into Mali, which were linked to one another by telegraph lines. Troops stationed at the forts provided reinforcements to one another, allowing them to quell any popular resistance throughout the zone. Some of these forts, as well as mobile military forces, are depicted elsewhere on the wall.

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The French incursions only forced communities to reorganize their opposition. France's conquest of present-day Mali was completed after fifty years of military campaigns. In fact, armed local uprisings and resistance continued up to World War I. The History Wall includes representations of a number of these early anticolonial heroes. One scene, taken from a photograph and a drawing (see Konare & Konare 1983:288, 297), depicts Babemba Traore and the tata, or large earthen walls, of Sikasso (Fig. 10). In the 1880s Babemba Traore was king of Kenedougou, and his capital, Sikasso, was protected and fortified by the tata. The caption on the drawing includes the date 1887, just a year prior to the French attack which destroyed the walls. During that attack, rather than surrender to the French, Babemba ordered his personal guards to kill him, reportedly saying: "Not in my lifetime will the French ever take Sikasso." The king's ultimate act of defiance in ordering his own assassination was a rallying cry for generations of resistance to colonial rule; the story is still remembered and retold throughout Mali today. The remains of the tata were recently declared a national historical site by the Konare government and are slated for partial restoration.

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A second panel, also containing images based on photographs (see Konare & Konare 1983:288), celebrates Cheboun and Firhoun Ag Alinsar, two northern Tuareg leaders of the fight against French colonial rule (Fig. 11). Tuareg resistance persisted well into the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1894 Cheboun led his followers against the French army at Goudam, where they inflicted significant losses. A decade later, in 1903, Firhoun Ag Alinsar was forced to accept a treaty with the French, but he nevertheless continued to organize armed raids at random sites. In 1915 he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years in prison. After escaping, with several of his followers, in 1916, Firhoun declared a jihad against the French. Later that year he was killed in battle.

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The Tuareg have always been contentious toward outsiders. They fought against precolonial states to the south, then resisted the French, and since independence have had uneasy relationships with the various Malian governments. In the late 1980s this tension escalated into armed conflict, but in the early days of Konare's government, in 1992, a peace was negotiated. The History Wall's inclusion of the two Tuareg leaders carves out a northerner's share in a contemporary Malian national identity. A separate monument located in Timbuktu celebrates the peace accord; still another monument on a traffic circle in Bamako also commemorates the settlement (Fig. 12). The Bamako monument's iconography embeds the history of that accord within the framework of an international iconography of peace: the two sides of a monumental arch-like construction meet and become two hands which cradle a globe surmounted by doves.

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In addition to the History Wall, several other monuments honor Malian nationalist heroes, such as the Memorial Center dedicated to Modibo Keita. There are also a number of sculptural tributes to African socialist leaders, among them Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo (Fig. 13). Others celebrate Malian cultural heritage more broadly and promote a national cultural identity in more abstract ways. Midway along Independence Avenue, a large bronze-colored concrete hippo visually anchors a major intersection (Fig. 14). The word hippo, mall in the Bamana language, is an eponym for the country itself. Similarly a fountain in the courtyard garden of the Bamako City Hall includes three crocodiles, bama, an eponym for the city (Fig. 15). At the center of this fountain stands a pair of large concrete ciwara based on the well-known Bamana masquerade headdress. Since the 1960s these antelope forms have been systematically incorporated into the national cultural lexicon. For example, ciwara were regularly used in the lego for official program of government-sponsored youth festivals through the late 1980s.

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Other monuments speak to a broader African-centered philosophy. One in the form of an obelisk contains symbols drawn from the indigenous script of four languages in Mall: Bamana, Nko, Dogon, and Bozo (Fig. 16). The choice of the obelisk is telling. With its reference to Egypt, it relates Malian history to a more ancient African history while embracing the Afrocentric philosophy of the Senegalese intellectual Cheik Anta Diop. The scripts celebrate a precolonial history of literacy in Mall, and the classic Egyptian obelisk form echoes local seventh-century obelisk-like megaliths installed on the grounds of the National Museum of Mall. Elsewhere in the city, a pyramid-shaped monument built in 1999 serves as a conference center and cafe. Named the Pyramid of Memory (Fig. 17), it also makes a clear reference to Diop's philosophy, which the Konare government's cultural policy embraced.

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Finally, a number of monuments insert Mail into a larger global arena. Across from the Ministry of Sports, the traffic circle is dominated by a monument to the Olympics. The male and female athletes, rendered in the Socialist Realist style, seem to be marching forward off the structure (Fig. 18). The monument celebrates the ideals of the international games and Mall's membership on the International Olympic Committee since the early years of independence. It too has a specific resonance with Malian postcolonial history: each successive government since 1960 has invested in youth organizations and regarded sports as a linchpin of its cultural policies. Organized sports has been used as an arena for educating youth in the ideals of progress, patriotism, civic responsibility, and national identity.

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More explicitly political is a monument erected circa 2002, dedicated to the Child Martyr of Palestine. Constructed as freestanding wall, it displays a mural based on the well-known photograph of a Palestinian child cowering behind his father as they are trapped in crossfire during an armed uprising. This monument is a strong statement of Mall's and most other African countries' official support of Palestinian self-determination.

Not surprisingly, the various publics that have weighed in about the monuments include both ardent supporters and vociferous detractors. Some of this commentary has appeared in articles and editorials in the newspapers, and some emerged during my conversations with a cross section of urban residents from taxi drivers to civil servants, from merchants to artists. Much of the criticism echoes that regularly heard about public sculpture in the United States: detractors question the selection of themes, the costs incurred, and the aesthetic merits of the projects.

A number of people I interviewed in Bamako in the late 1990s supported the public sculptures; they saw them as instilling in the populace an awareness of Mall's history, and they described them as attractive and good for tourism. In fact, in less than a decade, the monuments have become so much a part of the city's visual landscape that they are now regularly used to give directions. Other people, however, remain highly critical. They have expressed concern about using scarce national resources to build these works, although the government has in print and on television assured people that the monies are from the private sector and outside donor nations, including China, North Korea, and Libya (L'Independant 1996:6).

Still others have cautioned against the spate of monuments that they see as celebrating the cult of the personality. Often implicit is a specific disapproval of the rehabilitation of Modibo Keita, orchestrated by Konare's govermnent. A Memorial Center is dedicated to him, the stadium has been renamed in his honor, and a street now bears his name. Critics point out the fragility of memorials to political heroes in civic spaces. They often cite the destruction of monuments to Lenin in the former Soviet Union as an example, or of those to African leaders such as Bokassa after they were overthrown.

Criticism also revolves around the closed circle that determines the works' themes and design development. Many Malians resent that the initiative was wholly in the hands of the president and a small cadre of his supporters; they recognize the profoundly political nature of public art and of this project in particular. Supporters, however, have pointed out the unique qualifications of President Konare to direct this program. In a newspaper interview, Baba Pascal Coulibaly noted that the president had been immersed in cultural issues for the ten years prior to his election. He was Mali's Minister of Culture from 1978 until 1980, and in the late 1980s he was elected president of ICOM, the International Council on Museums (L'Independant 1996:6). An archaeologist, Konar6 has been active throughout his career nationally and internationally in the cultural arena. As Minister of Culture he worked to promote and reorganize the National Museum, and he has always spearheaded efforts to save important archaeological and historical sites.

Many Malian contemporary artists have assailed the monuments on aesthetic grounds. They argue that the style is retrograde and that they reflect neither recent Malian contemporary art nor a Malian aesthetic. Artists were also extremely disgruntled at not having been awarded ally of these public art commissions.

Other critiques are framed more overtly as part of opposition politics and in ways that represent the tensions within the Malian political arena. In an editorial, Mohamed Kimbri, public affairs liaison for the Muslim organization Aislam, voiced opposition to the monuments because they violate the Islamic interdiction against representational images (Kimbri 1999). This objection underscores the growing tension between a constitutionally decreed secular state and a growing Islamic orthodoxy. Leaders of the political party MPR (Le Mouvement Patriotique pour le Renouveau) took Kimbri's criticism one step further: they have promised that when they come into power they will replace the monuments with mosques (Aurore 1996:3). Other opposition parties have suggested in speeches that these works are the boll, or men's association power objects, of President Konare and his political party, ADEMA. They see them as a clear attempt to advance a particular political ideology in the popular imagination and to solidify the ruling party's domination of the political process. Categorizing these monuments as boll has a particularly strong resonance in terms of the nature of power in Mande society. This metaphor reveals how political rhetoric in Mall is often shaped in purely local terms.

The political philosophy of the Konare government in the latter part of the 1990s was directed toward decentralization, granting communities outside Bamako more autonomy in shaping local government programs and involved such things as restructuring local elections and distributing budgets. It is ironic, then, that the ambitious monument program being carried out in Bamako visually supports the centralization of political power and wealth in the capital city.

In 2002 Alpha Konare completed two five-year terms as president; according to the Malian constitution he could not stand for reelection. Amadou Toumani Toure running as an independent candidate backed by a coalition of smaller parties, was elected. Since then no new monuments have been constructed. Prior to leaving office, Konare did establish a division in the Ministry of Culture to oversee the care and maintenance of the monuments, but it is sadly underfunded. Aesthetic judgments aside, the priorities of Mali's new government will clearly have a major impact on the future of this often politically charged public culture initiative.

[This article was accepted for publication in April 2003.]

Research on the monuments was carried out over several years between 1997 and 2003 and was supported by grants from the Smithsonian Institution. I would like to thank Dramane Dembele, who assisted me during this four-year period. Mr. Dembele helped in conducting interviews, and he worked tirelessly to locate many of the articles on the monuments that appeared in various Malian newspapers.

References cited

L'Essor 1996. "Monuments Dedicaces a Ouezzin Coulibaly et h Abdoul Karim Camara dit Cabral," June 17.

L'lndependant. 1996. "Monuments: La Prdsidence rompt le silence," Dec. 26.

Fane, Yamoussa 2001. "Etude sur les Monuments." Unpublished report. Division de Patromoine culturelle, Le Ministere de ha Culture Mali.

Konare, Alpha Oumar and Adam Ba Konare. 1983. Les grandes dales du Mali. Bamako: Edition Imprimeries du Mali.

Kimbri, Mohamed. 1999. "Le monuments sont contraires l'Islam, La Republicain 556, June 9.

Nora, Pierre. 1989. "Between Memory, and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," Representations 26, Spring.

Mary Jo Arnoldi is curator for Africa in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. She has conducted research in Mall since 1978, and her current project is a study of youth festivals, museums, and monuments in Mali since independence in 1960. Arnoldi is also a consulting editor of African Arts.