Artist Shahzia Sikander, whose bronze sculpture Witness (2023) on the College of Houston (UH) was focused by anti-abortion activists earlier than being decapitated by a person with a hammer final month, wrote in a Washington Publish op-ed printed this week that she is not going to restore the broken work, as a substitute pledging to “go away the statue the way in which it’s: a testomony to the hatred and division that permeate our society”.
Sikander is a Pakistani American artist based mostly in New York. Witness is amongst her first works to be put in in public, however confronted protests by right-wing teams after it was unveiled on the College of Houston (UH) campus in February. The 18ft-tall sculpture reveals a girl with ram horns whose limbs develop into roots, held up by a hoop-skirt body. Anti-abortion group Texas Proper to Life known as the work “satanic” and threatened to boycott the opening of Sikander’s present Havah…to breathe, air, life (28 February–31 October) on the college’s campus. A gap celebration and artist speak have been subsequently canceled by UH. A person used a hammer to decapitate the sculpture within the early hours of 8 July, as Hurricane Beryl brought on energy outages throughout Texas.
“It’s clear to me that the individuals against the statue object to its message of girls’s energy,” Sikander wrote in her op-ed. She additionally doubled down on earlier statements that she wouldn’t restore the work, regardless of college officers reaching out to her instantly after the assault in hopes of fixing it.
“Because the artist who created the work, I’ve chosen to not restore it,” Sikander wrote. “I need to go away it beheaded, for all to see. The work is now a witness to the fissures in our nation.”
For Sikander, the sculpture stands for ladies’s empowerment. The lace on the determine’s collar is a nod to how US Supreme Courtroom justices like Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg feminise the black judicial gown. Her limbs are supposed to present “self-rootedness, one thing I’ve likened to ladies’s resilience in carrying their roots wherever they go”, Sikander wrote. The ram horns are constructed from the lady’s braids, that are common symbols of power and knowledge, she stated. Rams are a recurring motif within the decor of the New York appellate courthouse in Manhattan, which Sikander says she referenced for Witness.
“It’s my prerogative—some would argue duty—as an artist to ask how artwork can reimagine society. Once we are witnessing a regression of girls’s rights around the globe, particularly in the US, artwork can operate as a car of defiance. It may also be a path towards rectification.”
Abortion in Texas was outlawed in most circumstances in 2022, after the US Supreme Courtroom dominated to overturn Roe v. Wade and permit states to set their very own restrictions on abortion. Due to a set off regulation that had been handed by the Texas legislature the earlier yr, performing an abortion turned a felony punishable by as much as life in jail. The regulation permits for exceptions in circumstances of medical emergencies—although some Texas ladies have nonetheless been unable to entry providers—however none for terminating pregnancies attributable to rape or incest. A examine launched final month by The Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit healthcare basis, ranked Texas because the second-to-last state by way of ladies’s healthcare, solely coming in greater than neighbouring Mississippi.
Within the op-ed, Sikander urged UH to teach the general public concerning the work and to “handle the ignorance and rage underlying the assault”, including that the First Modification protects her “freedom to create artwork, regardless of how one chooses to interpret my work”.
