Volume 9 Issue 1 ( March 2022 )

A community often relies on memorials as a physical manifestation of their stance on a significantly fortunate event or even a traumatic one – despite the constant debate on dedicating a certain number of resources and effort to memorialize the latter, given the destructive effects it causes in our daily life. This debate is even more relevant in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This paper analyzed several examples of post-pandemic memorials, the historical and scientific contexts, as well as the varying attitudes of communities surrounding them. These analyses will refer to prior studies on the roles of memorials and monuments within the construction of memory and history, as well as the natural responses to grief and loss based on Freud’s 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia”. This paper emphasizes on how pandemics – particularly the current one – changes lifestyles and the way communities occupy public and domestic spaces, as well as where memorials stand in this transformed architectural field.

Keywords: post-pandemic memorials; mourning; memory; national image