1. Introduction

1Cities can be understood as palimpsests, made up of overlapping social, cultural, temporal and spatial layers. Seeing the city in this way requires recognising that historical structures are continuously being materialised, overwritten and erased in urban space. Memories are inscribed into the city through many forms, such as building designs that reflect the styles of their time, businesses opening and closing, and statues and monuments being erected. However, over time, the meaning of these traces can fade into the background, especially when the historical context and lexicon no longer occupy a shared memory space. One of these examples is colonial heritage, where much of the meaning behind symbols has been erased from the general collective memory, but the material traces still remain in cities.

2Brussels embodies this with particular intensity as its urban landscape remains dominated by colonial landmarks. The city contains at least 78 officially recognised items of colonial heritage and more than 38 streets that still bear imperial names [Jacobs, 2018; Goddeeris, 2015; Leu et al., 2020]. It is in everyday life that encounters with these colonial traces happen, yet these encounters are irregular and often superficial, depending on how people move through and use urban space. This article focuses on one such site, the Monument aux pionniers coloniaux in Ixelles, to examine how spatial conditions shape whether these traces are seen, how they are interpreted, and which decolonial interventions seem imaginable.

1.1. Heritage as practice and spatially mediated memory

3The past is not remembered through a single lens, as collective memories often diverge and collide [Halbwachs, 1925]. When those divergent memories gather around the same object, the result is dissonant heritage [Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996]. Subsequent work adds a layer of moral difficulty, as certain heritages confront societies with legacies of slavery, genocide or colonialism that cannot be easily celebrated or ignored, being known as difficult heritage [Macdonald, 2008]. Colonial heritage frequently occupies both categories at once, being central to contemporary struggles over representation and justice. More broadly, colonial heritage refers to material traces of the imperial period, including street names and monuments honouring colonisers, as well as buildings and urban developments financed by colonial extraction, but not limited to these.

4Critical heritage scholars see the meaning of heritage as a cultural and political process rather than a fixed, inherent property of the object [Smith, 2006; Harrison, 2013]. Meaning, therefore, is constantly being produced by people’s interpretations, contestation and authority. From this perspective, what colonial heritage “means” at a given moment depends not only on its iconography and history, but also on its interpretation, contestation and everyday use, which are mediated by space. Participatory heritage further extends this by thinking of people no longer as mere passive consumers of institutional-led narratives, but as active co-producers of heritage meaning and, by consequence, its significance [Roued-Cunliffe and Copeland, 2017].

5Following Lefebvre, space is understood here as socially produced rather than a neutral backdrop, being made and remade through planning decisions, everyday practices, and symbolic representations, and in turn shapes power, identity and experience. By consequence, space also influences people’s relationship with heritage and what is remembered, ignored or contested. Work on memorials has shown that memory is spatially mediated, as what a monument does depends not only on what it depicts, but also on where it is placed, how people come across it, and what behaviours the surrounding environment enables or discourages [Shanken, 2022]. They can also function for long periods as “unread texts” and then be “reactivated”, symbolically and spatially, when changing social and spatial conditions prompt new forms of attention, protest or everyday use [Shanken, 2022].

6This everyday reactivation has also been studied for colonial monuments specifically, with such sites understood as permanently unfinished, contested “arenas” where adversarial memories collide [Kelly and Boomgaard, 2025]. These dynamics became especially visible after the #RhodesMustFall and Black Lives Matter movements, when protesters defaced and toppled the Edward Colston statue in the UK, turning its empty plinth into a site for debating justice and teaching history [Cole, 2023]. Similar dynamics unfolded around the Léopold II statue at Place du Trône in Brussels [Rannard and Webster, 2020], and elsewhere globally. Beyond such overtly political acts, everyday informal interactions, such as routine visits or affective attachments, can also reshape a colonial site's meaning at the personal level [Duhennois, 2025].

1.2. The plan for the decolonisation of the public space in Brussels

7Belgium's most notorious colonial legacy is the Congo Free State, where King Leopold II held personal sovereignty and imposed a regime of terror through forced labour and brutal punishment to extract ivory and rubber [Stanard, 2019; Verbeeck, 2020]. While the average Belgian never visited the colonies, the urban fabric of Belgian cities, through their museums, monuments, circulation of ideas, and propaganda, functioned as a daily stage in which the Congo entered the daily lives of Belgians [Stanard, 2019].

8As a result, Brussels has seen multiple grassroots and institutional efforts to decolonise its public space. Either through the removal of colonial markers, such as the removal of the bust of Émile Storms, or through the insertion of new counter-memories, such as the inauguration of Square Lumumba in 2018 and more generally changes of colonial place names [Zian, 2026]. This reflects a broader pattern in Belgium, where the decolonisation of public space has increasingly unfolded at the local level, rather than being driven primarily by national institutions [Goddeeris, 2025].

9In Brussels, these dynamics have also extended to the regional level. In 2022, a working group developed a framework of recommendations for addressing colonial heritage, including a spatial lens that distinguishes sites by their level of interest, by how closely a monument’s design is bound to its surrounding public space, and by how spatially distributed its colonial symbols are [Abrassart et al., 2022: 132]. These findings have shaped the 2023 Brussels Action Plan on Decolonising Public Space, aimed at bringing previously silenced histories to light [urban.brussels, 2023]. Implementation began in 2024. Building on this landscape of contestation, Vaesen et al. [2024] have proposed a typology of intervention strategies for controversial colonial markers in Brussels, identifying strategies ranging from maintaining the status quo to outright removal. In Belgium, this has also been covered through press interviews tracking shifting public and institutional attitudes towards colonial heritage, including the De Deken statue in Wilrijk [Bruyndonckx, 2020], the Pioniers van de beschaving monument in Mechelen [Verstuyft, 2022], and the Léopold II statue near Sainte-Elisabeth church in Mons [Wuidart, 2021]. Yet even where citizens were consulted, these sources capture the positions of those already engaged with the debate, rather than how ordinary passers-by, who may not be actively engaged in this debate, encounter and interpret these monuments in everyday life.

10This article brings an everyday spatial perspective into the Brussels debate, asking how a highly visible colonial monument is actually experienced in the flow of everyday life and what people who frequent this space think should be done with it. Starting from the premise that decolonisation is most effective when it engages not only those who are already involved, but also those for whom the issue is not yet politically central, this article understands the decolonisation of public space as, fundamentally, a spatial practice. The meaningful transformation of shared public space therefore requires engaging a broader public whose ties to colonial heritage may be primarily spatial. It argues that if the decolonisation of public space is to reach a broader public and foster new forms of collective memory, interventions must also transform the spatial conditions of encounter, since relationships between passers‑by and colonial heritage are fundamentally spatial and cannot be shifted by symbolic measures alone.

2. Methodology

11This article draws on qualitative fieldwork conducted at the Monument aux pionniers coloniaux in Ixelles, Brussels, between November 2024 and March 2025 as part of a broader research project on everyday encounters with colonial heritage in the city. The analysis is based on small-scale ethnographic observation, and eleven short semi-structured interviews with passers-by conducted in French and English.

12Interviews were structured into: (1) socio-demographic background, (2) familiarity with the site, (3) perceptions of its meaning and historical significance, and (4) attitudes towards colonial heritage in everyday life. Questions were open-ended, with follow-up prompts depending on participants’ engagement. Participants were randomly approached as they passed by the studied site and interviews lasted around 15 minutes each.

2.1. Limitations and positionality

13Many respondents expressed discomfort when asked directly about age, education, gender or professional background, so these questions were dropped after the initial interviews. Also, most respondents were white, with only two non-white participants and one reporting a non-European background. This likely reflects, in part, the demographic composition of the square's surroundings, a historically affluent, predominantly white residential area, as well as the timing of fieldwork, conducted mostly in autumn and winter, when the site sees less foot traffic. Age also appeared to shape responses, with younger respondents tending to favour more radical interventions and older respondents more often favouring the status quo.

14My own position as a researcher also shaped the fieldwork. As a white, Brazilian woman studying colonial heritage unconnected to my own national history, I approached this project with an awareness that I was researching the heritage of a coloniser from the standpoint of someone from a formerly colonised country. My accent, primarily in French, marked me as foreign from the moment I spoke, and this foreignness, combined with my self-presentation as a master's researcher, may have signalled a pro-decolonial stance to respondents. This could explain a certain hesitancy I observed among interviewees whose views diverged from decolonial positions, relative to the greater ease of expression of respondents whose views aligned with decolonisation. My positionality likely also facilitated the fieldwork itself as lingering in the square, taking photographs and notes, and approaching strangers were actions I could carry out largely unquestioned.

3. Results and analysis

3.1. The Monument aux pionniers coloniaux

15This Sprimont blue stone monument was designed by sculptor Marcel Rau and architect Alphonse Boelens and funded by the municipality of Ixelles. It was erected in 1933 on avenue Géo Bernier at Square de la Croix-Rouge to honour local “pioneers” who died during the colonisation of Congo between 1876 and 1908 [Abrassart et al., 2022: 100].

16The monument (Figure 1) takes the form of a column topped by the stylised head of a Mangbetu woman, her eyes and lips closed in an expression that arguably signals passivity and acceptance. The Mangbetu became a recurring motif in Belgian colonial imagery after their elongated, wrapped heads were widely exoticised and circulated in colonial photography and propaganda [Abrassart et al., 2022: 100-101]. In the sculpture, the woman holds a gilded bronze Congo star in one hand. Just below her head, the column bears the inscription “Ixelles à ses pionniers coloniaux”, while the column carries the names of 32 Ixellois involved in the colonisation of Congo, alongside carved motifs associated with the colony (Figure 2). Despite its stereotyped depiction, it remains the only monumental representation of a Black woman in public space in Brussels [Abrassart et al., 2022: 101].

3.2. The spatial production of invisibility

17Monuments and memorials are often placed in the “urban leftovers,” spaces left over from street planning or areas with little commercial value or development pressure [Shanken, 2022]. As a consequence, memory is inserted into places that rarely, if ever, have been designed to serve commemorative purposes. This is the case of the Monument aux pionniers coloniaux in Ixelles.

19Today, the monument receives little attention, occupying a spatially marginal position within the site. Observations on weekend afternoons recorded over fifty pedestrians per hour around the square, yet only two or three walked directly in front of the sculpture. Most visitors use the square to move between the Ixelles ponds area and Abbaye park, using the space regularly as a shortcut. Furthermore, most interviewees said they had never noticed the statue before despite having been to the site, and those who had described it as “very hidden”. Even for those who do locate it, corrosion, darkening and weathering have rendered many of the engravings difficult to read, limiting the legibility of its colonial message.

20Since the statue was installed, subsequent changes in the space have reinforced this invisibility. The addition of a second crosswalk now allows pedestrians to bypass the monument entirely as they move between the two green areas. At the same time, bushes on the Abbaye side and fences around the ponds act as subtle barriers that channel movement around, rather than towards, the statue (Figure 3). This vegetation and spatial layout further obscure the monument’s presence. Thick bushes and mature trees block sightlines, and only a few fragmented vantage points still offer a partial view of the statue (Figure 4). Archival images suggest that, at the time of inauguration, the surroundings were more open, as landscaping was sparse and trees had not yet grown to their current height, making the monument a more prominent visual feature than it is today (Figure 5).

21These dynamics can be read through Lefebvre's spatial triad [Lefebvre, 1991]. The square's original layout, conceived as a transit hub within the city's broader circulation network, established an enduring spatial practice through the habitual routes used by people who cross the site. When the monument and its landscaping were introduced in 1933, they added a new representation of space, a conceived layer designating the site as one of memory and reflection. Yet this new representation never altered the spatial practice it was meant to accompany. As a result, the site's memorial function was never absorbed into how the space is actually lived. Over time, a transit hub briefly redefined as a site of memory reverted to functioning primarily as a circulation corridor, as everyday practice reasserted itself. This is visible in how people move through the square today, often carving informal shortcuts directly towards the ponds or the abbey.

22For any future intervention to endure, it is not enough to layer a new representation of space onto the square, whether a plaque, a new monument, or fresh landscaping, without also transforming the spatial practice that structures how the site is actually used. Only a change that reconfigures movement itself, for instance, redesigning paths and traffic flow to stitch the site into a continuous green corridor between the square and the ponds rather than leaving it as a residual patch of land between two areas, stands a real chance of shifting the site's lived, representational meaning. Otherwise, decolonial interventions risk reproducing the fate of the original monument, becoming invisible in everyday life.

3.3. Interpretation of the colonial layer

23Under the classification proposed by the working group for the decolonisation of public space, this monument is classified as an “Intentional colonial memorial,” serving “only to place an event or person [in this case, the ‘pioneers of Ixelles’] literally and figuratively on a pedestal” [Abrassart et al., 2022: 77]. The monument encodes colonial meaning at two levels: (1) textually, through the inscription “Ixelles à ses pionniers coloniaux” and the carved names of colonial pioneers, and (2) visually, through the stereotyped depiction of a Black woman as exotic and subordinate, the Congo star she holds, and the carved colonial motifs.

24Still, most interviewees were unable to identify the monument's colonial elements or register its colonial significance, suggesting that, for this particular public, the monument functions as invisible/unreadable under the framework proposed by the working group. Part of this gap can be attributed to a lack of colonial literacy needed to decode the symbolic meaning. However, the site's own spatial conditions make decoding difficult even where the relevant literacy may exist. Its spatial logic, structured around fast through-movement, combined with the monument's material decay, which has rendered several carved details barely legible, rarely affords the proximity and time needed to read the monument's meaning.

25A recurring reading interpreted the monument as a celebration of a Black woman and, by extension, as progressive. Among these respondents, the woman's head was most often mentioned as what first drew their eye, while others pointed to the star, the small symbols, or the word “pioneers”, without recognising these as colonial references. These respondents could therefore visually locate the very elements that make the monument colonial but did not decode them as such. All who read the monument this way also expressed strong progressive and decolonial views and support for greater inclusion of women and Black citizens in public space. However, because they lacked further contextual information and did not examine the statue closely, they seemed to project their own beliefs into their interpretation of its colonial symbols. Notably, this reading appeared exclusively among male respondents, which may point to gender disparities in identifying stereotypical depictions of femininity; among them, only one recognised the depiction itself as stereotypical.

26Beyond these misreadings, a small number of respondents correctly identified the site as a monument honouring colonial pioneers, and one participant cautiously suspected it “might be colonial”, largely on the grounds that “every monument in Belgium is about colonialism”, pointing to the depiction of a Black woman as a possible clue. The remaining interviewees were unable to say what the monument commemorates. Several respondents were aware of debates around public space decolonisation and contestation of colonial heritage in Brussels, with some mentioning the Leopold II statue at Trône as an example. However, awareness of Leopold II's colonial links and of the broader Brussels debate did not necessarily translate into decoding the colonial imagery from the Monument aux pionniers. This points to a need for colonial literacy that extends beyond widely recognised figures like Leopold II to encompass the smaller, easily overlooked elements that are just as central, in everyday life, to a meaningful decolonisation of public space.

3.4. Proposed interventions

28Respondents who misread the monument as a tribute to Black women also described its impact on their daily lives as positive, with their positive feelings stemming from this misinterpretation and from a broader desire for greater representation in public space. By contrast, interviewees who, once informed of the monument's colonial meaning during the interview, described its impact as negative, expressing feelings of guilt or sadness, describing the statue as “sad” or “wrong”, and finding it troubling to still have monuments honouring colonisers in the public space. Alongside these, other respondents reported feeling no impact from the monument at all, even after being informed of its colonial ties, indicating that the colonial dimension of this site had little, if any, effect on their everyday routines or spatial experience. This emotional divergence, depending largely on what respondents believed or learned during the interview rather than on any sustained relationship with the site, points to a weak link between spatial practice and the site's colonial layer.

29Interestingly, those who reported feeling affected by the monument also admitted they had never noticed it before the interview. This suggests that their responses stemmed less from a sustained relationship with the statue, such as encountering it repeatedly on daily walks and having it serve as a constant reminder of the colonial past, and more from general ideas about colonialism and a desire for broader representation in public space prompted by the encounter itself.

30These perceived impacts, or the lack thereof, shaped participants’ intervention proposals. Vaesen et al. [2024], identified six common strategies for dealing with controversial colonial memorials (maintaining the status quo, contextualisation, reinterpretation, relocation, neutralisation and removal).

31At the site, interviewees showed a clear preference for contextualisation, typically proposing the addition of a discrete explanatory plaque to clarify the site's colonial ties. This preference for a modest scale was often conveyed by the usage of the word “small” but also through gestures with their hands to indicate the intended size and placement, typically pointing to a spot near the base and bottom part of the column rather than proposing any more visible or freestanding marker. One respondent addressed accessibility specifically, recommending the plaque be presented in French, Dutch and English. Supporters for this type of intervention had noticed the monument before but claimed that they did not feel affected by it in their daily lives, which may explain why they favoured small, non-disruptive interventions. While contextualisation could help explain the statue's colonial layer to those unable to recognise its meaning on their own, these minimal additions will not change how people move through or use the square and are therefore unlikely to provoke sustained reflection. At a site many already bypass, they risk going unnoticed altogether.

32The next most common position was no intervention at all, leaving the statue and site as it currently stands. Among these respondents, some had misinterpreted the monument and felt positively about having it in their everyday environment, illustrating how support for preservation can stem from misreading colonial symbols, even among people morally opposed to colonialism and supportive of broader representation.

33A related but distinct proposal implicitly shared this preference for leaving the monument itself untouched, while still calling for change. Frustrated that the statue had become difficult to see due to overgrown landscaping, he suggested pruning trees or redesigning the area to make it visible again. Believing the monument honoured Black women, his desire to increase visibility stemmed from wanting to showcase this representation. He was also the only interviewee to explicitly identify the site's spatial conditions as an obstacle and to propose a solution addressing the site itself. Other respondents' proposals did not engage with the possibility that the square's spatial layout could undermine their own suggested interventions as well.

34A less common position explicitly called for removal, proposing that the monument should be replaced by a memorial honouring the victims of colonialism. This proposal resonates with recommendations from the working group for the decolonisation of public space, both through the exploration of a general memorial to colonial victims and, more specifically for this site, the replacement of the current monument with one honouring Black women from the diaspora [Abrassart et al., 2022:]. Such a change would meaningfully shift the site's symbolic register, from glorifying colonial perpetrators to honouring those who suffered under colonial rule. However, as argued in the previous section, this symbolic shift is unlikely to be sufficient on its own.

35A final position declined to engage with the question of intervention altogether, out of the conviction that such decisions belong only to those directly and negatively affected by Belgian colonialism. However, such a position risks narrowing the circle of legitimate participants in the debate, where an effective decolonisation of public space should invite a broader public into co-producing solutions or at least amplifying the demands of affected communities.

4. Conclusion and discussion

36Within the broader belief that decolonising public space must reach and engage a broader public in order to be truly effective, the case of the Monument aux pionniers coloniaux shows why spatial relationships have to be central when thinking about interventions in colonial heritage. It demonstrates that the relationships between passers‑by and colonial heritage are fundamentally spatial and, thus, cannot be transformed by symbolic measures alone.

37The square’s current layout and the monument’s decay, combined with the fading of colonial symbols from collective memory, results in the monument being erased from everyday life. The decay, while seemingly unintentional, can function as a passive strategy of forgetting, allowing difficult histories to fade from view without the need for overt removal [Wilson, 2015]. The working group's report itself recommends using greenery to symbolically counteract monumentality [Abrassart et al., 2022]. Yet, in this case, the vegetation erases most of it from view, and when combined with material decay, the two work together, allowing neglect itself to do the work of forgetting.

38Vaesen et al. [2024] discuss an argument against removal that favours relocating colonial monuments to museums, where they can be contextualised. This position highlights that museums differ from public space in important ways: access is not always free and visitors tend to be less diverse, but they are more inclined to spend time reflecting. By contrast, monuments in public space are often defended on the grounds that they are freely accessible and seen by a wider range of people. However, the findings of this article suggest that, at least in this case, the diversity of users is limited and engagement with the colonial layer is extremely low when it is noticed at all, so simply keeping monuments in situ does not guarantee meaningful encounter or reflection on colonial heritage.

39The findings also suggest that decolonisation processes should not only ask people what should happen to monuments, but also invite them to reflect on how they themselves use and move through these spaces. In this case, most interviewees crossed the square as a shortcut and did not feel affected by the monument, which helps explain why their proposals remained small, symbolic and detached from their own spatial routines. Framing change in terms of spatial relationships would mean asking how interventions might alter everyday movement, visibility and opportunities to linger and reflect on the topic. Following Lefebvrian theory, spatial transformation that alters how people engage with and move through a site can produce more meaningful change than symbolic gestures alone that address only representational space. As Hattori [2023] showcases through her study from São Paulo, transformative, space-altering strategies are far more likely to activate critical memory and social justice than the mere placement of additional texts.

40It may therefore also be useful to think of decolonisation in steps. A first step is making colonial symbols legible in everyday space, for example through contextual tools that help people recognise what they are seeing, while pairing them with changes in spatial design to increase visibility and create conditions for encounter (where needed). Only once the symbols are recognised and can enter people’s mental maps of the city does it become possible to have a broader debate about what should be done with them and how the space itself might be transformed.

41If the goal is lasting impact, solutions must reconfigure the space to actively support memory. In the case of the Monument aux pionniers, this could mean rerouting paths so that pedestrians naturally pass the monument, and creating places to stop and reflect critically. Without such changes, any intervention, whether a plaque or a counter‑monument, risks fading into the background and having its message absorbed by the flow of everyday life over time. Lastly, this article has argued that debates regarding the decolonisation of public space remain incomplete if they do not engage the everyday person and address how sites are organised and lived in everyday life.

I would like to thank Matthijs Degraeve, the supervisor of the thesis which this article is based on; Gisèle Gantois for her inputs; the editorial team for their support through the writing process; and the participants for their time.