Heroes Graveyard – 2023

Oil on canvas H44.5 x W30.5 cm

Commemoration of past individuals’ exploits in heroic statuary is all pervasive in almost all countries worldwide. However, when regime change takes place or the appetite for past ‘glories’ wears thin, the essence of ideological apotheosis, the statues, become targets and are often torn down or vandalized.

The desecration of public monuments is universal. The expression of individuality by altering, damaging or destroying structures in commonly utilised spaces, is the means to make one’s expressive mark by, albeit vicarious and (most often) anonymous social interjections, expressly visible in the public domain.

Ironically, ancient statues who have over the aeons, lost limbs, noses and other ‘protrusions’ would appear incongruous to us now if reconstituted back to the original. A typical example that we have come to accept and love ‘as is’ – is the ([h]armless) Venus de Melos