Decapitated Shahzia Sikander Statue to Remain at U. Houston

Shahzia Sikander b. 1969, Pakistan Follow +

Shahzia Sikander‘s sculpture Witness (2023) will remain on display at the University of Houston until October 2024, as originally planned, despite missing its head.

The statue was decapitated on 8 July, months after the state’s largest anti-abortion group, Texas Right to Life, protested ‘to keep the Satanic abortion idol out of Texas’.

Sikander has requested the statue not be repaired, and the university has agreed to honour her wishes.

‘Transparency is most important to counter concealment and secrecy,’ Sikander told Hyperallergic. ‘The damage reflects the hateful misogynistic act and it should not be forgotten. It is part of the history of the work and is a testament to the power of art.’

Witness, a co-commission by Madison Square Park Conservancy in Manhattan and the university’s art acquisition body, was conceived by the Pakistani-American artist as an homage to women in the U.S. justice system.

The five-metre-tall figure seems to levitate above the cage of her iron skirt, where mosaic fragments inspired by the stained-glass ceiling at the Appellate courtroom in New York spell out havah, meaning ‘air’ in Urdu and ‘Eve’ in Hebrew and Arabic.

Its lace collar is modelled after the decorative collars worn by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve in her position and a vocal proponent of reproductive rights.

Speaking to Ocula in 2016, Sikander said, ‘I am interested in the dislocation of objects and forms and how meaning is constantly in flux.’

A blue tarp now covers the gold-plated figure, which was first exhibited at Madison Square Park over five months last year.

Right to Life’s petition to the university characterised the statue as ‘disobedience to God’ that honours ‘child sacrifice’. Features members found offensive included the statue’s nudity, its ‘tentacular’ limbs, and the homage to Justice Ginsburg.

The installation of an accompanying video work, Reckoning (2023), was postponed after the protests. The university also cancelled opening celebrations and the artist’s talk.

‘We are unaware of any connections to our peaceful demonstration in February,’ Right to Life’s Director of Media and Communications Kimberlyn Schwartz told Ocula.

‘Just as the statue’s violent pro-abortion message is immoral, we believe that an individual responding with violence is also wrong,’ Schwartz said.

During an online meeting with Sikander, the university confirmed the vandals were caught on tape. Sikander’s request to see the footage has been denied.

‘It was a very violent act of hate, and it should be investigated as a crime,’ Sikander told The New York Times.

The university said campus police are investigating the incident.

There is speculation that protesters may have confused Witness with its sister statue, the two-metre-tall figure NOW (2023), which was commissioned alongside Witness and sits on the rooftop of the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State.

According to Madison Square Garden Conservancy’s exhibition guide, NOW was made in relation to the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade (1973) in 2022, which ruled for the constitutional right to abortion.

While neither statue is explicitly about abortion, Sikander expressed the urgent need for a figure that represents ‘bodily autonomy’.

The fact that Witness is raising controversy ‘seems to be exemplifying these very fissures in the country’, she noted after the protests in February. —[O]

Main image: Shahzia Sikander, Witness (2023) at the University of Houston on 9 July 2024. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Abdurrahman Danquah.