Conclusion : Contemporary Art?

The Garden of Memory is a project that, despite its memorial role fits into a tradition of contemporary art. One only needs to think of works by Tony Cragg, a Land artist, or the sand painting of the Navajos to see the parallel. We could also cite the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington by Maya Ying Lin in a similar tradition of contemporary memorial art.

However, it must be underlined that this project assumes fully its utilitarian function: the cathartic process implied in its construction, and the refusal to forget or negate the existence of the genocide. It is an artwork that fully assumes its political function.

"How can one depict the unnameable, the unimaginable?" is a question which has often been posed by artists. Contrary to other types of monumental art which establish a distance between the "artistic" and the "human", this work will be created by a whole community and will be an evocative synthesis of the relation between the survivors to the world in which they now live.