Detail                                                                                                          Text: esse #93

In the centre of New York City, in the centre of an iconic traffic circle named for him, Christopher Columbus stands flanked by the Time Warner Centre and the Trump International Hotel & Tower. This public circle and its monument are front and centre in the current debate surrounding the memorialisation of historic figures and periods, the need to question and examine the context from which they came, and ultimately the merits of their possible removal. This work nevertheless reveals those everyday moments of life—the mundane, the absurd, the humorous, the lonely, the dubious, and the spectacular—which occur in the shadow of this massive figure, and the even larger debate that surrounds him.