A Shahzia Sikander sculpture is under fire after an anti-abortion group claimed that the work promotes “satanic” imagery. The sculpture, titled Witness (2023), was born to explore the relationship between femininity and power.
It features a female figure who levitates above the ground, her arms and legs dissolving into root-like forms. She dons the armature of a hoop skirt that contains mosaics depicting plants. She also has a lacy collar similar to those worn by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court justice.
According to Sikander, the work was, in part, a response to the paring back of abortion rights in the nation. Amid those developments, Sikander wrote in a statement accompanying the work, came a dismissal of “the indefatigable spirit of women who have been collectively fighting for their right to their own bodies over generations.
However, the enduring power lies with the people who step into and remain in the fight for equality. That spirit and grit is what I want to capture in both the sculptures.”
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The work is to appear next week at the University of Houston in Texas. However, some conservative groups don’t want the work to go on view at all, calling its imagery abject.
Earlier this month, Texas Right to Life, a self-described “pro-life” organization credited with helping to undo Roe v. Wade, claimed the work enlists “satanic imagery to honor abortion and memorialize the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” However, it did not describe what that imagery was.
“Disobedience to God certainly should not be esteemed by society, much less lauded with a statue,” the group wrote. “On the contrary, art should reflect truth, goodness, and beauty: three timeless values that reveal the nature of God.
Art cannot have beauty without truth. Art cannot have truth without goodness. A statue honoring child sacrifice has no place in Texas.” This is not the first time Sikander’s work has been subject to controversy in conservative media.
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In 2023, Fox News ran a report on X users calling the sculpture “demonic.” Axios reported that Texas Right to Life was referring to a booklet about Witness published by the Madison Square Park Conservancy that mentioned Abrahamic religions, which refer to horned beings.
“The trope is not the artist’s alone: horned gods and goddesses abound in world religions, from ancient Egypt and Greece to other parts and eras of Africa and Europe.” According to critic Aruna D’Souza, in the Abrahamic faiths, the horned beast has everything to do with forces of evil, chaos, and destruction.
D’Souza continues, “But again, Sikander reveals to us what’s really at stake in such conceptions. In the biblical story of creation, Satan and Eve are intertwined the way a snake wraps around a tree limb; woman is the vehicle for iniquity, the temptress, the instrument of evil.
Sikander takes this idea, one that runs through so many cultures and epochs and philosophies-of women as a threat, as an embodiment of unspeakable desire, as taint -and turns negativity into power. Her Eve, her Havah, sports her horns like a crown as a point of pride. She understands the endless projections onto herself as her strength.”
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In an FAQ about Witness, the University of Houston acknowledged that the work might be “offensive to some people.” It said, “The sculpture has braids shaped like ram horns, representing the unification of disparate strands.
Ram horns have significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Central and South Asian beliefs, and are often associated with power and valor. The artist has said the braids link to one of her paintings that represents the courage, fluidity, and resilience of the feminine.”
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