Sam Durant: Iconoclasm

For thousands of years monuments have been constructed by one culture, only to be removed by another as attitudes, beliefs and structures of power shift and change. The culture wars are nothing new.

All around the University of Essex from Thursday 16 February to Friday 24 March 2023 are sited Sam Durant’s large scale drawings from the series Iconoclasm, depicting acts of destruction enacted upon public statues and monuments. Based  on images found in various historic sources – such as newspaper and television reports – Sam Durant focuses on moments of disruption, and calls on current debates about how we relate to these potent symbols placed in public spaces.

Infiltrating the squares, paths and buildings of campus, the drawings document fleeting yet significant moments of historical change. Now reproduced and increased in scale, their appearance within the campus community draws attention to questions of representation: who gets to occupy these spaces – and who gets to be heard? While the University of Essex is yet to mount a statue in one of its squares, these central spaces are where our community has come together for over 50 years during protests and demonstrations; those highly charged moments when students want to create change and build alternative futures.

Iconoclasm is also brought together for a display in the Albert Sloman Library.

Download the site guide and tour the exhibition.