Soft Monuments

Interrogating the presence of colonial-era monuments in the Caribbean, Thompson’s latest body of work considers the quiet power that markers of memory hold, and their capacity to capture, obscure, and reflect post-colonial transatlantic memory. 

Traditionally, the state-sanctioned structures are built to be permanent, spectacular commemorations of imperial power and conquest. Soft Monuments offers a counter-approach: intimate and delicate works that evidence time rather than resist it. Drawing from personal archives, Thompson thoughtfully samples Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides, 16mm color home movies, and found photos—remixing them into collage-based installations, video and sculptural works. Repurposing photographic materials that naturally fade, warp, and shift in color, Thompson foregrounds fragility, the passage of time and its influence on our recollection of the past. 

For Thompson, softness is found in both physical qualities and emotional affect. Within socioeconomic landscapes shaped by redlining and privatization that boosts tourism while restricting local access, souvenirs—like monuments—become charged symbols of extraction and erasure. Nodding to what scholar Krista Thompson calls “tropicalization,” the exhibition features fabricated 3D-printed film slide keychains, found travel brochures, and related objects. In contrast to their polished aesthetics, archival images that were captured and kept through intimate lived experiences anchor the viewer in the interconnected, tender realities that exist on the margins of touristic fantasy. 

Deploying layered meaning and contradiction, Thompson’s soft monuments invite viewers to maneuver between the personal and political, cultural authenticity and neo-colonial artifice. Offering broader context for her latest work, Thompson shares the following, 

“In the Caribbean, monuments often stand as silent witnesses. They rise from town squares and waterfronts as if neutral markers of heritage, but their permanence is a fiction—one that masks the violence, displacement, and historical erasures they’re built on. I want to challenge this and other commemorative traditions, which are so deeply rooted in colonial power, by proposing alternative models that center fragility and multiplicity.”  

Artist

Kat Thompson is a multidisciplinary Afro-Jamaican American artist based in Virginia. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from George Mason University and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University. 

Artworks