If these queer walls could talk: Queer monumentality and <i>The Great Wall of Los Angeles</i>

This article contributes to debates swirling around one relatively new way of representing LGBTQ pasts: the monumental. This form—which applies “a weightiness, timelessness, and grandeur” to its subjects—only became available to queer Americans starting in the 1980s. Previously, LGBTQ Americans primarily interacted with their pasts in what Thomas Dunn calls “tactical” and “ephemeral” ways. Queer monumentality has helped activists overcome unique memory challenges LGBTQ communities face and forward political projects. The author demonstrates there are dangers in applying monumentality to queer people, however, such as contributing to homonormativity, which represents and empowers some queer people while erasing or disciplining others. Rather than rejecting monumentality, the author argues it is possible to create a robust queer monumentality that addresses these dangers. Her intervention is to propose monumental muralism as one compelling way forward. Specifically, she argues that The Great Wall of Los Angeles , one of the world’s longest murals and subject of a recent exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, can serve as a model for designers of future queer monuments.