“Displaced”

مەرام إحسان

Object: Statuette. Material: Pottery. Found in Ur (modern Tell Muqayyar), Iraq. Manchester Museum inv. 40594. Only the torso and upper legs of this nude female statuette survive. She stands with her arms crossed over her body, underneath her breasts. The statuette was excavated and removed from the important Mesopotamian city Ur, whose history spanned over 4,000 years until it was abandoned at the end of the 4th century BC. The statuette’s date is unknown. Photography by Julia Thorne / Tetisheri.

My piece shows a classic view of a Middle Eastern town. A nameless town. It is intended that the foreign viewer will recognise vaguely the part of the world it’s from. For the Middle Eastern viewer there are elements which help them relate it to their personal home town.
Overall the piece conveys a sense of emptiness. Desertedness. It shows how, now, almost no one remains. Like the statue even its people have been displaced.
You see all of this through the Ischtartor. But only a tiny bit of the gate shows. This highlights how only a minuscule amount of our heritage remains in our cities, but also how little our culture is known abroad despite our heritage being scattered across the globe.
Sirko