With Monuments, Dominique Blain enclosed a series of 12 photographs and a massive crate made from old planks bound with rope. The crate, a replica of the one used to transport Titian’s Assumption from the galleries of the VeniceAcademy to successive safe houses during World War I (1914-1918), suggested the presence of the celebrated painting. For their part, the photographs attested to the efforts made to save this and other pieces of Italian heritage (they were taken from a book devoted to the fate of Italian monuments during wartime). By incorporating these first-hand images into her work, Blain gave them new meaning and allowed viewers to see how art contains a symbolic power bound up with identity. The scale of the piece was designed to raise questions about the fate of art subjected to the same perils as human life. The installation
illustrated how we try to protect objects that we take to be national treasures.
