Reparative interpellation: public art’s Indigenous and non-human publics

Abstract

This article considers the multiple ways in which public art interpellates viewers as settlers, Indigenous and non-human subjects. It could be argued that much public artwork in the late 20th and early 21st century has a ‘reparative’ function through its socially-engaged, community-specific and consciousness-raising aspects. To do so, however, would be to conflate the reparative with the recognition of injustice rather than understand it as the action of repair. The author asserts that for public art to engage in reparative work necessitates interrupting the normative forms and materialities of public art that interpellate the ‘public’ as settler subjects. How, he asks, might the reparative potential of public art be re-envisioned through a consideration of Indigenous and non-human publics?