Olympic torches: a symbol of memory, propaganda, and resilience

“Olympic torches are not static objects, they are part of a continuum in which ideas, images, and narratives change. So, bringing these objects into the present allows us to question and reinterpret them, and see how their meanings shift when they are placed in new contexts,” explain Sonia Leimer and Christian Kosmas Mayer in the introduction to their work, What We Carry.

This exhibition, that is part of the Milano Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympiad, features an extraordinary collection of 43 Olympic torches (1936–2024) belonging to the Olympic Aid and Sport Promotion Project Association, that have been reframed by displaying them together with new works and research by Leimer and Mayer. The exhibition experience reveals how the design and symbolism of the Olympic torches are intertwined with themes of power, visibility, and cultural legacy.

The starting point for this project was a collection of 43 Olympic torches that were to be presented at the museum as an installation. How did you approach working with this pre-existing collection, and what guided your decision to transform it into a work of art?

Christian Kosmas Mayer: At the very beginning, we asked ourselves how this collection of Olympic torches could meaningfully connect with our own work. We soon realized that it relates closely to the idea behind Sonia’s placeholder sculptures. Torches are used to transport light; they stand in for the Olympic flame. When the light is absent, the torch becomes its visual placeholder. The flame itself is created by women every four years in Olympia, using a parabolic mirror to focus the rays of the sun. This gesture resonates beautifully with Sonia’s recent works, which explore our relationship to sunlight.

Sonia Leimer: My aim was to create a strong sense of temporality within space, almost a timescape. The torches are therefore shown together as a family in a large sculptural structure that occupies the entire room and subtly references a running track.. In this setting, the torches appear as a family, a lineage. This sculptural presentation is accompanied by a video that explores questions of light, heat, and warmth in relation to our living environment. The video, entitled Solar, shows the reflection of the sun and the shifting colors inside the parabolic mirror used to ignite the flame, followed by a melting iceberg we encountered on Fogo Island this year while working on the project. It is an image that speaks to the planet’s relationship to the sun.
Christian Kosmas, on the other hand, focused his attention on the torch from 1936, connecting it to his long-term research project on the Olympic oaks.

The 1936 Olympic torch has a complex history – it marked the first torch relay but also had troubling political associations. What drew you to engage with this particular torch, and how did its darker origins shape your artistic response?

CKM: The first Olympic torch relay, introduced at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, was part of a broader effort by the National Socialist regime to stage the Games as a spectacular propaganda event. Their aim was to present a peaceful and welcoming image of Nazi Germany, only a few years before they unleashed the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust. From the outset, it was clear to us that this torch needed to be shown separately and framed within a critical context. The Olympic oaks were another symbolic invention of the regime that was awarded to all gold medalists, including the African American athlete, Cornelius Johnson. By linking the torch to the oaks, we therefore show how these symbols were used for ideological purposes. This connection also puts the torches in the context of Johnson’s lived experience, that was marked by discrimination in both Berlin and the United States, and this helps viewers understand them, not as neutral memorabilia but as elements of a contested and deeply political history.

When revisiting these historical symbols and events, what does it mean to you to reframe them through a contemporary lens? Do you see echoes or resonances of those histories today?

SL: Olympic torches are not fixed in time but part of a long continuum in which ideas, images, and narratives shift. They have carried very different meanings across the decades. Sometimes they were used for political spectacle, sometimes they became icons of unity or technological optimism, and sometimes they simply faded into the background of the event. Looking at them today, you can still sense echoes of the forces that shaped them, like national ambition, soft power, and the desire to craft a particular image on the global stage. But bringing these objects into the present also allows us to question and reinterpret them and see how their meanings evolve when they are placed in new contexts.

In your work for Museion, fire and flame appear as fleeting emblems of nationalist spectacle, contrasted with the quieter story of the oak tree brought home by Cornelius Cooper Johnson. Yet the oak itself also carried ideological weight in its time. How did you navigate this tension between symbol and story, and how does that dialogue unfold in the installation?

CKM: The oak was one of the favorite symbols of the Nazi regime, and this particular species was unjustifiably promoted as the so-called “German oak,” even though it grows right across Europe. It felt essential to address these attempts at ideological appropriation as well as the actual life story of the tree through a multi-narrative approach that would bring these parallel histories together. What makes the Olympic oaks so interesting, however, is that they are not just symbolic carriers of an ideology but also living beings. And living beings follow their own biology, their own rhythms, and in a way even their own will. That is why it was important for this work to include living seedlings from Johnson’s oak. They bring a different kind of presence into the installation. One that refuses to be reduced to propaganda and instead speaks of growth, resilience, and time.

Christian, your research involved tracking the journey of Cornelius Cooper Johnson’s Olympic oak to Los Angeles and even cultivating new saplings from the original tree. Nearly ninety years later, how has the meaning of that oak evolved for you both—does it continue to grow new layers of interpretation?

CKM: Even though this tree is deeply rooted in the historical context of the 1936 Olympic Games, it has formed many new relationships over the course of its almost ninety-year lifespan. It has grown into a massive oak in the middle of multi-ethnic Koreatown in Los Angeles and has been cared for over decades by a family who migrated from Mexico to the United States. All of this suggests that the story of this tree has become the opposite of what the Nazis once imagined as their ideal future. But for me, the work also carries a warning: the liberal democratic values we cherish are not guaranteed, and they must be defended time and again against authoritarian forces.

On the occasion of the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, Museion was invited by the Provincial Coordination Committee of the Games to design an exhibition dedicated to one of the world’s three complete collections of all Olympic torches, from the first relay in 1936 to the present day. For this occasion, Museion launched an invitation-only call addressed to five internationally active South Tyrolean artists to propose a project that would reinterpret the meaning of the Olympic torch. The proposal by Sonia Leimer and Christian Kosmos Mayer was selected as the winner and took shape in the exhibition What We Carry, where contemporary art intertwines with values such as inclusion, sustainability, and legacy.

What We Carry – Until March 29, 2026