Abstract

This thesis is a study of two works by the Canadian artist Mark Lewis; the public sculpture What is to be Done? (1990-91), and his film Two Impossible Films (1995). The first work consists of four 1:6 scale plaster statue replicas of a monumental bronze statue of Lenin toppled at Piata Scinteli in Bucharest, Romania following the removal of the Ceausescu government in 1990. Rescaled from their previous monumentality, Lewis situated these 'anthropomorphic' Lenin statues in public sites in the Western cities of Oxford (England), Quebec City, Montréal and Toronto--each facing existing cultural 'sites' such as monuments and a museum. The second work of my enquiry is Lewis' 26 minute, 35mm, looped colour film comprised of two short film segments: 'The Story of Psychoanalysis' and 'Das Kapital'. Though each work is executed in very different mediums, it is my intention to demonstrate how these two works function as counter-monuments.