Whose Monument? Memory Ownership, Contested Heritage and Cancel Culture in Northern and Eastern Europe (Oana Nasui, ed., PostModernism Museum Publishing House, 2026, ISBN 978-630-95002-3-6) is a collaborative study book bringing together researchers, cultural practitioners and artists from Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, and Romania to examine how societies negotiate the meaning of public monuments when historical narratives collide with contemporary values.
The volume traces a wide arc — from the mechanisms of digital shaming and their spillover into heritage debates, to institutional mediation practices in Nordic cultural policy, grassroots counter-monuments such as Copenhagen’s I Am Queen Mary, the entanglement of Sweden’s One Percent Rule with colonial and anti-racist memory work, and the afterlives of communist-era and post-1989 statuary in Bucharest. Through original essays, case studies and an architectural perspective on the very notion of contestable heritage, the book argues that recontextualization — rather than erasure or uncritical preservation — offers the most productive path for democratic societies confronting difficult pasts.
Published within the Nordic Insights project (Nordic Culture Fund / Globus Opstart+), the volume is a resource for cultural professionals, heritage institutions and municipal decision-makers working at the intersection of public art, collective memory and cultural democracy.
Who’smonument? Memory ownership, contested heritage and cancel culture in Northern and Eastern Europe
Oana Nasui ed.
PostModernism Museum Publishing House, 2026
ISBN 978-630-95002-3-6
Content
Oana Nasui
Cancel Culture: From Digital Shaming to Contested Monuments
Niels Righolt
Between dilemmas and interaction
Alba Baeza
Public Art in Sweden: Inclusive Stories and Collective Memory
Hanna Granlund
Monuments and modern-day cultural hegemonies in Sweden
Giulia Gotti
Grassroots approaches to Danish colonial history in public monuments in Copenhagen: The rise of I Am Queen Mary
Burak Sayin
Rehearsing Memory Institutions, Artists, and the Nordic Way of Remembering
Cosmin Nasui
The many lives of Romania’s royal equestrian statues in Bucharest: rise, fall, and return
Cristian Vasile
Case Studies on Controversial Monuments and Public Art Projects
Cezar Petre Buiumaci
The Lovinescu–Ierunca Monument in Bucharest
Augustin Ioan
Contestable Heritage
Addenda
If interested in having a digital or a hard copy, please write to oana at formareculturala.ro
