Gendered memories: the use of pieta in Lithuanian commemorative monuments to victims of the Soviet regime

ENLithuanian monuments that utilize pieta motifs for commemorating victims of Soviet regimes are quite prominent in public spaces. These Catholic images of Virgin Mary grieving her son's death in Lithuanian national and religious imaginaries perform a tri-fold function, since they reference not only Mary's grief, but also repressed mothers' and nation state's, too. Without negating the ability of public monuments to provide meaningful ways to grieve and remember collectively, I argue that the conflation of sacred and national symbolism in these monuments has the power to enshrine the role of women as passively suffering mothers, thus reinscribing stereotypical gender roles and downplaying the importance of women's political and social input. [From the publication]