Long before monuments were generating debates, protests and headlines over what and who should be commemorated, the Polish-born conceptual artist Krzysztof Wodiczko was broadening the scope of what memorials around the world could be, taking them well beyond their makers’ intentions.

Since the 1980s, he has been projecting videos onto historical statuary and structures, making monuments into megaphones for the powerless in society. War veterans, Hiroshima survivors, the grieving mothers of murdered children, abused female laborers — all have proclaimed their personal stories from these pedestals.

“Monuments can be useful for the living,” said Mr. Wodiczko, 76, at his studio in the East Village, the New York neighborhood he has called home since 1983. (Mr. Wodiczko, who is married to the painter Ewa Harabasz, commutes each week to Cambridge, Mass., where he has taught for the last decade at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.) “Sometimes it’s safer and easier for people to tell the truth in public,” he mused.

Two socially and politically charged public projections are currently bringing new life to monuments in Manhattan. After dusk each evening in Madison Square Park, continuing through May 10, the faces and hands of 12 resettled refugees animate the 1881 bronze statue honoring Adm. David Glasgow Farragut, a Civil War hero, which was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The refugees, in a looping projection by Mr. Wodiczko, recount their harrowing journeys to the United States from their war-torn countries, including Syria, Guatemala and Mozambique.