Grass Monument

Drawings and photomontage by Nina Sanadze showing a variety of grass treatments.

Proposal for the permanent or temporary installation

Grass Monument is a proposal for a permanent site-responsive, botanical public art installation that has not been realized. It attempts to contribute to the nation’s reparation by adjusting the existing colonial narrative. Re-wildering the manicured lawn surrounding Captain Cook’s monument, it recreates the pre-settlement natural environment that once stretched across this area.

The project is supported by the local government’s environmental group. The native Indigenous foundation has also initially expressed support for this project. However, since the #blacklivesmatters protests in June 2020 and the consequent worldwide expulsion of monuments, their support has been withdrawn. I am sharing here this valuable journey, where I’ve learned to step back and respect the creative and storytelling space that is not mine to uphold. And so, Grass Monument installation transcends its physical manifestation and the journey of this proposal becomes the project; the proposal is the outcome, a well-intended gesture and some grass food for thought.
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Proposal for the flash mob installation

I am interested in spreading an open invitation to participate in the realisation of this idea, to promote democratic action that could bring communities together though an expressed symbolic and positive active gesture. The idea is to stage the Grass Monument installation through a flash mob action, attempting to make this action viral. As an expression to support the #blacklivesmatter cause, the broader general public would be invited to bring a pot of native grasses or a shrub at a certain day/time and leave it at the foot of the Captain Cook monument at St Kilda Foreshore. The same action could be replicated by any community and with many other monuments throughout Australia. Grasses can also be planted into the ground. With enough participants, enacting the idea has the potential to create an instant landscape; a visual, poetic and symbolic monument of a different type.